van Gooswilligen Paraguay: august 2013

Well well.
We have never blogged before and I forgot right away how to log myself in. But hopefully I have learned it now.

A lot has happened these last weeks. The weather has changed back an forward between 2 C to 36 C and we have all catched some cold. Aunt Miriam and Silje have been sick but hopefully the weather will start to get more stabil .

By the way...sorry about my bad english...Norwegian, Icelandic, Dutch and Learning Spanish is quite confusing....I was trying to speak Dutch to my mother in law on skype but it all came out in Spanish..and now Im struggeling aswell with my English.
But since most of our family and friends understand English we will try to use that Language in this blog.

Finally Wouter and I have our immigration papers ready (after having visited a lot of Offices and payed a LOT of money for all different kinds of stamps). Our childrens papers will hopefully soon be ready aswell. We are still waiting for some papers from the paraguayn embassy in London.
But we are really, really happy for that our container has arrived and we have our things here (But I dont understand why I packed with us 20 table clothes but I forgot our guitar and Arons "bass forsterker" (Have no idea what the English Word is..... Suddenly we really feel at home.
The best of all is all the Icelandic Liquris I had put in the container :) We also had with us a lot of second hands clothes from "Hertex Reykjanesbær" and all of the kids and the staff at "el Redil" have recieved new clothes and they are so greatful. Next week we will take some clothes with us to the indian village (They are extremely poor there). Then we will try to sell rest of the clothes on a fund raising marked for the corps.

There has been some changes here at the children home last week. Some of the oldest girls are not able (or it is not safe for them) to go home in weekends so we do now have 7 extra kids in during the weekends. We think we will need to continue to have some of the children here during the whole week so now we are trying to get more foundings to the childrens home. We need to hire one employee in weekends, and we also need continue to have an employee on night shift. Last year when we were here it was only a dog on night shift so we are really happy now for havin senora Alicia here during the nights instead of the dog. She also does some cleaning and laundry during the night so we are really happy about that.

We also need to safe up money for a minibus (15 seats). Now we have a car with 8 seats. The children have a 20 min. walk to school and when the weather is bad and its raining we need to take them to school with the car. Sometimes we are 17 people in the car...normal here but not safe and we do not like it. The aircondition in the car is broken and it also need some reperations. In weekends we now are 12-14 people and we need to get around to church and also to take some trips with the kids and get away from the home.
So please pray for us that we will get foundings for this, if you are able to help us, please contact us.

We also need to do some changes in the childrens sleeping rooms and bathrooms, aswell we dream of getting a copymashine here for both the childrens home and the Salvation Army division and corps here in Paraguay. And while I am dreaming...what about getting an aircondition in some of the rooms in the children home and getting a dish washing mashine!!!. But I know that there are many other more important things we need money for first. The most important thing is to be able to keep all our staff and pay them sallaries and to make sure that the children here hafe food, School and all they need to be safe and happy here on "El Redil".

Its so wonderful to experience the joy and trust in God, that the children here have. We really feel at home here, after just a month. Aron, Moira and Silje are adjusting better for each day and we are so greatful for "ACA, Asuncion Christian Academy" for beeing so understanding and taking so good care of them. It is a big change for the kids having to use English all the time in school and also learning Spanish but they are doing very well. The most challenging thing is the amount of homework they have to do and we need to help them at least 3 hours everyday so its hard work.

Now I need to stop this writing
One of the Girls in the children home is turning 10 years old today, but now the School has called, she is sick and I need to pick her up and get her back here because she is sick.

Hasta luego - Dios Bendiga
Ester

The Childrens home " El Redil" in Asuncion is our new home.
From beeing a family of 5 we have now 34 children and a dog. I
n our new extended family there are 6 staff members, plus our Divisional commanders and neighbours Major Nicolasas.

We arrived to Paraguay 29. of august 2013 and this first weeks we also have aunt Miriam here (as a spanish translator) and our "allways smiling" cousin Nina Kristin.

We will try to update this blog as much as possible. Because our Norwegian, Icelandic and Dutch background we figured that we would try to use english on this blog. (So sorry about bad grammar , and probeably will some Norwegian, icelandic words find their way inbetween in this blog)

Here are some pictures from our time in Paraguay so far:)