Birthday Bash

 It's traditional here in Paraguay to invite your friends or family over for asado.  A friend came over Friday evening and helped me clean the house and get things ready.  Then we watched a movie while I finished sewing the giant bean bag chair.  (I had no idea it would be so huge!!)  On Saturday morning I went with a friend to the grocery store and got everything we need for the asado from meat to paper products.  We made it out of the store for under $100USD, which I thought was pretty impressive for the amount of meat we bought!  I got things ready on Saturday, so that on Sunday after church we could all sit around and visit.

 The asado: wish you all could have come!

Praying for the meal

 Alicia and I shared our birthday, because hers was the day after mine.  We put (almost) enough candles on the cake for the both of us!  After a minor bonfire we got to taste the cake. :-) 

Afterwards we sat around talking until about 9 pm when everyone had to leave.

ALWhat?

In May the mission hosted a two-week long conference on discourse analysis. 

"So...what exactly does that mean?" you're wondering.

That's how we all felt, too!  A few months ahead of time, we were told to ask friends for stories.  I recorded a few different stories, one about a strike that a friend's little brother did at school when he was 10, a legend about a certain flower, one about a traditional character that tries to get into heaven, and the Joseph story from Genesis.  It was hard at first to choose just one, but in the end I chose the legend about the flower.

In the mornings we had about 4 hours of lecture: (I'm in the third row along the right wall)

 

In the afternoons we had opportunities for one-on-one time with different co-workers.  This lady gave most of the conference and helped us all to understand how to analyze what a person is saying and how they put the "big chunks" together.  For example, stories versus recipes.

 

 I set up shop in the corner and got to work.  I really enjoy this kind of work, and look forward to possible doing it in the tribe one day.  This time I used Spanish, and put it into an Excel chart to categorize all the different parts of the story...it gets crazy-technical from there!

Representing over five countries of service, and many new brothers and sisters in Christ: