Ever wondered what a 300 year old religious statue would look like with a live human head? Me neither and before you start thinking along gory lines allow me direct your thoughts in the right direction. The 12^th of June in Paraguay is a national holiday known as ‘Paz del Chaco’ which celebrates the end of a war with neighboring country Bolivia. Knowing this ahead of time our group took advantage of the 3 day weekend and split to the south border of the country to a city named Encarnación. Within a half hour bus ride of this city lie 2 ancient Jesuit ruins which now make attractive tourist locations.

Upon arriving at the first site around 8 in the morning we were presented with a much more eerie side of the ruins than any of us had expected due to a dense fog that sat heavily on the site. We spent most of the morning at checking out the old stone structures of ‘Trinidad’ and referring to my opening line, found the location to be surprisingly unrestricted in the sense of supervision as one can see from the inserted photos. The second location, Jesús, was a half hour bus ride away if you take a local Paraguayan’s bus and is settled next to an appealing farm town with the same name. This site was noticeably smaller and I was told it was only an operational colony for a short period, something like 5-10 years.

While we are in the topic of short periods of time, the 27^th of June designates the one month mark of our disembarking. The following is a rough reference of the remaining time:

From now until July 3^rd – Normal schedule of teaching classes

July 4^th through the 10^th – Time to tie up loose ends and spend time with the group

10^th through the 19^th – Global Youth Summit and Mennonite World Conference

20^th through the 26^th – Last days to spend with the host family and group

27^th – Flight to Chicago from Asunción

I remember thinking one of the neatest inventions was a cd alarm clock my friend had in college. This nifty device could be programmed to play any song that you happened to have on cd to wake you up in the morning. While it wasn’t quite the same being that I couldn’t choose the song or alarm time, 2 weeks ago I was awakened to a lightly strumming guitar and a small chorus of Molinas singing ‘Que los cumplas feliz, que los cumplas feliz, que el Señor te bendiga, y te haga feliz!!!’ followed by hugs, congratulations, a big birthday sign and a brightly colored gift bag.
In case you don’t know the tune in Spanish, yesterday was my birthday and the Molinas were not going to let me forget it. After the sunrise serenade my day was sprinkled with birthday wishes from the family, friends, church members and any person that dropped by the house. After a specially prepared lunch that was made according to their direct probing of what food I liked best, María spent most of the afternoon preparing for the barbeque like ‘asado’ dinner meal while I taught classes which each informally started with the students singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ In one of the classes I was actually given presents by the majority of the students!

The climax of the day came when I returned home from teaching my class to a good 20 guests boisterously singing that all familiar tune followed by a train of people each presenting me with a gift (I should mention here that the dinner party was a joint party between me and my host sister who had her birthday 2 days earlier). We spent the rest of the night chatting over a huge dinner and was sung a grand finale ‘Happy Birthday’ before we cut the cake. A few days before this I was talking to my mom and before hanging up she told me to enjoy this day and make it memorable because it could be the only birthday I ever have in South America. I can say I took her advice and enjoyed my day but with such a personal celebration who wouldn’t?!?