These are fun pictures from home and from Easter weekend.

Amanda Arzamendia, one of our teenagers at church recently had her baby- he is beautiful and she named him Matthias Agustine.

Every Friday of Easter week, we have a cookout at the church building. This year we had about 30 in attendance and we feasted on the typical Paraguayan cookout- beef, sausage links, mandioca and salad to go with it all. Yummy! We had a few entertainers- Thiago and others told jokes, Carolina sang for us and it turned out to be a great day!

We had a special day at church where all our members invited friends and family to visit our congregation for Bible study and worship. We had close to 100 for worship and afterwards we celebrated with a fellowship meal.

The annual church-wide retreat was held on March 21-22 with the theme of “Spiritual Renovation” and was based on Romans 12:1-2. The retreat, which took place three weeks after the merger of the Sacramento and Capiatá congregations, was a great opportunity for the two groups to get to know each other better. Pedro Vera, Enoch Rinks, Chris Fry, and Perry Hardin were the speakers for the weekend. Ike Yegros and Raquel Franco also taught separate men’s and women’s sessions. Seventy people were present for the worship service on Sunday morning.

Our family took a trip to San Francisco, Paraguay, to visit our medical missionary friends, Jeff and Amy and their 5 kids! They invited us out to experience their lives, visit and for Chris to teach a financial seminar to the people of their town. We had a great trip- they live out in the country and life is DIFFERENT! But good!

Leticia, Mirta's daughter, celebrated turning 15 with a big party at their house. She looked beautiful and we had a great time!

The ladies hosted a tea at Smilce's house in honor of Cara and Andrea's visit from the states.

Feb. 25- March 4, Andrea Spradlin and Cara Blackmer traveled to Asunción in preparation for their relocation to Paraguay to work with the church. Lord willing, the Blackmer family will be arriving in September, 2009 with the Spradlin family following in January 2010. These are a few of the pictures of things they saw and experienced. We had hundreds of pics, so I just picked out a few.

The youth group traveled to Piribebuy, a small town about an hour and a half outside the city for their annual retreat. They had a great time! They held a children's VBS and had around 200 kids! That number far exceeded their expectations!

These are pictures of this year's annual school supply giveaway. For us, the school year starts in February and March and goes through around November. Various churches in the states donate to make this effort possible. The supplies are given out to all of the kids at all three congregations as well as several orphanages.

Many of the members of the youth group went out to visit the orphanage in Limpio to spend time with them, play with them and give them a yummy treat of ice cream!

Our year long intern Rocio, left to return to the states on Dec. 27. The Yegros family had a small

The church members wanted to have yet another farewell party for Rocio, so they threw one at some of our members' home. Rocio loves to dance, so they pretended to dance for some pictures in her honor at the end.

Every year, we celebrate another year together in our congregation with a big dinner. This year was no exception! However, we also had a farewell party for our year-long intern, Rocio. She will be missed!

In Paraguay, December 8 is a Catholic holiday where they walk from Asuncion to a town named Caacupe and they worship the saints in the Cathedral. Our congregation always has an event on that day. This year we had a cookout at the Asuncion Christian Academy. It was over 100 degrees, but we had a great day of fellowship and food! And did our best to stay out of the heat.

Josh is a fellow American who is also a missionary. He had previously worked with our intern Rocio in Thailand with Let's Start Talking. He came to Paraguay to spend some time with his friend Leticia whom he had met when he was a foreign exhange student here years ago. He got in contact with Rocio and from there has been very involved at our congregation. He and Leti got engaged and then married in December! They plan to live her for a few years before they head off to possibly Thailand to continue doing mission work.

These are pictures taken throughout December of us decorating the tree, doing our fun daily activities to countdown to Christmas, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This is the first year in a few that we have actually been in Paraguay on Christmas Day and it was really nice to be in our own home and celebrate with just us and the kids. Of course, we missed our families, but we really enjoyed our 100 degree Christmas in Paraguay- snow inlcuded!

Several of the youth group members helped clean and clear a piece of land.

The youth group visited several orphanages and took them donated items such as mattresses, blankets, air condition units, etc. Looks like they had tons of fun!

The last few days of October, we traveled to the states for our annual furlough. We made it just in time to celebrate Halloween in Florida with Chris's family! We also traveled to Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas. We spent a lot of time on the road, visiting friends and supporters. And in between trips, we got to celebrate an early Thanksgiving and Christmas with Vickie's family. Our last 10 days were spent with Chris's family where we celebrated Thanksgiving, rested and prepared for our trip back home.

As a congregation, we spent the entire day at a property owned by some friends of our one of our members. We worshipped, met in small groups, ate a wonderful lunch together, played games and the kids enjoyed swimming. It was a rather warm day, but we had a great time!

Sunday after services, the team took off to a nearby lake town to spend a few days relaxing and enjoying time together. It was a great time of renewal! We got to try out some local eating joints, take a boat ride at sunset, play with monkeys on the way home and most importantly, just spend time together.

Many congregations in the states and several of our own members, donated clothes to giveaway to those who needed them. While Kelly was here, she used some of her time to organize them. She prepared them so that we could give them out to those who needed them, both members and friends and neighbors of our members.