Gwen Carlisle, Easter newsletter
Dear Friends,
This comes to wish you all a very Happy Easter as we remember Jesus’ death on the cross for us and his rising from the dead. May the joy of that Easter morning be yours. As we live here in Paraguay we are more than ever convinced of the joy of the Easter morning as we have just spent two days (Thursday and Friday) almost in a state of mourning with silence all around us as people remember Jesus’ death. Sadly, however, Easter is over and it’s back to business today. Easter Sunday seems to be forgotten as Jesus stays on the cross. The joy is lost!
We had last week off for Easter taking extra days over the official two we were supposed to have. It’s back to school on Monday. We have only been back in school for 4 weeks and Easter seemed to be upon us. School started well once we had listened to a few more grumbles! Once we started there was a calm and the parents settled down too and some even came to tell us how happy they were! We started with a service in the cathedral which went well with Patrick Butler speaking. The 6th form seemed happy to come back to school and have settled well and have lots of ideas as to how they’d like to organize some events in their last year.
We are both teaching this year. Mags is in 9th grade teaching the class she missed in 6th grade and they hadn’t forgotten! They’re getting along well although she describes them as lively and lazy. Gwen has pre-school again with 28 little ones who took a while to settle and learn to sit still and listen. She reckons they were just about getting there... until we had a break!!
Despite outbreaks of yellow fever and dengue still being around , camps got off to a start within the first weeks of being back. The 5th and 6th grades went to their usual camp site and studied the life of Esther. The 7th and 8th grades went to a camp site at Itaipú, the huge dam providing hydro electricity for Paraguay and half of Brazil. We’re all still laughing as they had a power cut whilst they were there!! This area is a nature reserve and ecological area. Sadly they had put so many restrictions on the camp site that it wasn’t quite the fun it was meant to be. The year 11 pupils went to Concepcion with Mags to paint the regional hospital, this time the consulting rooms, and to dig a latrine. They painted 5 rooms in the hospital and started on the latrine but the rain came down and put an end to that. They also visited a few very needy families and the pupils were very touched by what they saw and came back determined to help.
Trips to our sports ground resumed in March. The pupils go once a week for the day. This time they were pleasantly surprised to see that there was a new, hard surfaced pitch for basketball, handball, tennis etc. The week before Easter the pupils had egg hunts up there too. These were not always what they were supposed to be as they also found a snake and a tarantula! Staff were on alert by then! We’ve recently acquired a rhea (like an ostrich) for the ground as they are supposed to eat snake eggs. This one is still a baby and would rather follow the people round. Whilst the secondary were out at the sports ground the other week a monkey came to visit the primary and was sitting on the sand pit roof. We felt like we’d seen it all by the end of the week!
On top of all that, in the short time we’ve been back we’ve also managed to have parents’ meetings for every class. We also had our Easter service just before we finished for the break. The 6th grade did a dramatized reading and the 6th form did a dance to an Easter song which left a few folks in tears. Two of the older boys, both committed Christians, led the service and an ex pupil, Karenina, did the talk. It was all very moving and wonderful to see ex pupils in the church. Karenina is very involved in the Anglican youth service working alongside Patrick.
Yellow fever caused great panic when it reached the outskirts of Asuncion. We did our sums and decided we hadn’t had the jab for far more than 10yrs (the time it lasts) and so had to join the queue. Gwen went one day with folks from school and queued for 2 hrs. In the end they closed the doors and told them they were going to come out to the people. They waited a while longer until a doctor finally told them they’d run out of vaccine. There had been near riots in some areas and we suppose no one wanted to face that there. Finally more vaccines were flown in from various places around the world and we got ours a few days later with barely any wait.
We are both well. We had a lovely holiday over the New Year when we went to the beach in Brazil and then had three days in Curitiba, a Brazilian city. We then came home and had almost 4 weeks at home before going back into school. That provided a lovely break as we found time to potter and do jobs we never get round to. Our animals are all well but more spoiled than ever. They get worse the longer we are home and are never far from us. The fish aren’t doing quite so well and half of them (3) died last weekend and we don’t know why... maybe it was old age?
Thank you to all who sent cards at Christmas time. Some Christmas post finally made it at the end of January but we don’t think all the cards came. The post is still very bad with many things taking 2 months to get here. Our computer went in for a clean at the beginning of January and we are still discovering that some names have fallen off mailing lists. We hope most of you are now back on. For those reading this, you are the lucky ones!!
Thank you for all your prayers and support. They are very much appreciated by us.
God Bless,
Love from
Gwen
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