Jason after working in the chaco.

The first week of October is here, and with it a taste of fall weather. It rained really hard for a couple days and then got really cold. But when the sky cleared it was absolutely beautiful weather. It was a nice change from the scorching heat. They said it is normally rainy season by now but it has only rained a handful of days so far. On Sabbath, we had two churches from Guayaramerin come to our school. About ten people were baptized in the river, and it was very neat to see them baptized out in nature. I couldn’t help but wonder what it must have been like to listen to Jesus and John the Baptist preaching and seeing thousands of people listening to their message. And the power with which they spoke leading the multitudes to repentance and baptism.
This week I, Jason, have been speaking on post-modernism and the emergent church and the different forms of worship/prayer that are coming into our churches. It is something that I am still learning myself and a bit complicated, and it has been somewhat of a challenge simplifying the messages so that the kids can understand. I am able to speak pretty well in the present tense in Spanish but giving devotionals I have a translator because it would be really hard for me to communicate about spiritual things in another language. I definitely wouldn’t want to portray the wrong ideas by misusing words. But I have enjoyed it very much and I have two more messages to go this week. Carrie has been doing a great job leading a Sabbath school class and preparing worships in Spanish for our family group. We have about 9 kids who come to our house twice a week for worship in the evenings and last night Carrie wrote a really nice worship on Daniel 1. We asked the kids what they would like to study and one of the first year girls said Daniel so we started that study last night.
Yesterday we cancelled 3rd and 4th year classes, which are juniors and seniors, so that we could all go out and work in the chaco. The chaco is our field where we plant rice. We have cut down all the trees and vines in the jungle and have burned everything. Now we are cutting all the trees into firewood with chainsaws and stacking them in huge piles to take to town and sell. We had an assembly line of about 15 kids passing logs of firewood to stack. There was smoke and dust everywhere and everyone was pretty black from the soot on the wood but it was a lot of fun working together.
We sold granola again today and I, Carrie, realized something that is very different here from in the states. When we go to people´s doors to sell the granola, which first off would not even happen in the states, because people would think we were trying to poison them, people often will say we have no money right now. These people live day to day. Remember we are selling the granola for $1.25 and they don’t have even that much in their house. Imagine not having even a dollar to your name. Maybe we would learn to depend on God more to supply for our needs…but for know we can praise Him for all the many blessings He gives us each day!