The Past Month's Adventures

A lot of time has passed since my last post, so this post may be long. I have lots of pictures and exciting things to share.

First of all, Elisabeth, John, and I did make it to Buenos Aires to apply for John's passports last month. It was a fast trip, but very fruitful. We left on a bus on a Sunday evening, arrived in BA the next morning, applied for both a U.S. passport and an Argentine passport, and then returned on a bus that night to arrive back in Misiones on Tuesday morning. Whew!!!! We were tired, but were blessed with John's Argentina passport two and half weeks after we applied for it! Dane just returned this past week from completing the application process for John's U.S. passport, and Lord willing, that should arrive within two weeks. Our littlest guy is almost ready to travel!

We discovered on this trip to Buenos Aires a most amazing thing in this country that I hadn't realized before because I rarely get out. We have known for a long time that the culture here is family oriented and children are looked upon with fondness by most, but I did not know that there was a rule - "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad", or in English "Women with babies have priority." Can you imagine what this means? It happened first in McDonald's. Elisabeth and the baby and I were standing in line to use the women's restroom when a McDonald's employee came and got me and informed me of the rule, "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad," she said. Imagine my surprise when she ushered me into the bathroom in front of all the other waiting women to use the restroom first! Once in the restroom, there was another line of other waiting women with children, but when they saw me they ushered me in front of them seeing that my baby was the youngest! Ha! What kind of place is this, I thought. It happened again at the Argentina Federal Police where we went to apply for John's passport. We got in line behind about 50 people only to be quickly ushered into the building to a special line for women with babies. What a wonderful concept. I imagine something like this would be so quickly abused somewhere else, but here, I suppose it is a respected cultural thing. Looking back to my trip to Buenos Aires with Abby and Joseph when we applied for his U.S. passport, I now understand why they let us ride the subway for free - they wouldn't allow me to buy a ticket and quickly ushered me through the handicapped entrance to the train because I was toting a baby.

A few days after we returned from Buenos Aires, we had some visitors from Paraguay. Our visitors were strangers to us, but had learned of us through a friend in Texas. They quickly became friends too, and we were so blessed by their visit. They graciously brought their own blankets, delicious homegrown and made foods for all eighteen of us, and their Bibles and hymnals in order to worship and study the Word of God together. They were very forgiving and didn't seem a bit uncomfortable in our modest accomodations. We had two wonderful days of fellowship, food, Bible study, singing, and stories with our guests before they returned to their homes in Paraguay. We basked in the glow of their visit for days after they left. It was such a blessed time for us. They have invited us to come and visit them and we plan to do so in October.

From the top left to right is: Jonathan and Adrianna, Daniel, Matthew, and Irene.
Lower left to right is: Rebecca and Ethel, Esther, and Carol (from Plainview, Texas).

Our neighbors, Horacio and Lucy, over at the Chacra Mariposa, made us a CD of pictures that they had taken when we were there visiting one day and gave it to us as a gift recently. Here are a few pictures from that day. This was just a couple weeks before John was born.

I mentioned in my last post that Dane had finished the floor in the second story. He also got some walls up there too, so that when our guests came we had divided bedroom areas. I still haven't gotten any good pictures of the upstairs yet, but below is one in our new bedroom just after he had finished the floor. We had a bee box wall and curtains for a few nights before Dane was able to begin the real walls.

Here is a picture of Joseph helping me to scramble some eggs. You can see all the additional space that we now have downstairs behind him since we moved the children's beds upstairs. The tape on Joseph's nose was to keep him from picking a scab that was there.

Dane has been working on the outside of the house too. He continues to get it closed in more all the time. He really got motivated to get it closed in quickly recently when vampire bats started attacking our cows at night. Thankfully, that activity has seemed to subside.

Dane has been doing a lot of work on the roads into our farm. Trying to improve the old one and make a new one. The work has been hard and it has been really hard on his tract vehicle and implements. He has had to weld the implement arms and several of the implements. The roads are slowly getting better and better.

Dane has also been working with the bees a lot and has brought home another colony recently. That brings the total to fourteen working colonies. He had a problem with one a little over a week ago and it may have to be exterminated. The colony has grown huge, it is one of the first three that he bought, and it is very aggressive. All the bees here are Africanized and can be very dangerous if a colony becomes overly aggressive. While changing the boxes on this colony the bees began to sting him through his protective gear. Dane set down the box pieces and his smoker and ran down the road to escape them, but they persued. Elisabeth, David, and Joseph were back at the top of the hill in a little shack, not too far from the hives, and Dane began to worry about the bees finding them as the sky was becoming black with angry bees. He went to the window and asked the children if they had been stung and at that moment a bee stung Joseph. The children had to make a run for the truck which by this time was crawling with bees too. Each of them were stung between fifteen to twenty times. Once they were far enough away from the scene, Dane was able to pull over and get the bees that were in the truck out. And since he was about 40 minutes from town, he then drove to the hospital in Obera as a precaution in case one of the children had an adverse reaction. Joseph and David were administered shots to counteract the stings even though they were only showing signs of minor swelling. Elisabeth wasn't swelling at that time, so she was sent here home with Benedryl. We continued to remove stingers from her head that night. The stings never slowed down Dane and the boys, but Elisabeth woke up very swollen and sore the next day and acted quite miserable. By the next day though, she was back to herself. Dane hoped that the temperatures would drop enough so that the bee colony would die due to exposure that night, but they didn't. He returned the next morning and reset their box and he is now thinking of an extermination plan.

Well enough about bees. Here are some pictures of some other interesting insects that we have found around the farm recently.

This one is a newly hatched or emerged (what is the word I'm looking for?) moth. Its wings were still curled and it could not fly.

This is a huge wolf spider that has made its home in our kitchen.

This is a little armored beetle that is marked similarly to a ladybug.

Here is a pretty moth that Abby found on the chicken tractor.

This is a newly hatched walking stick. It was really tiny and hard to get a good picture of.

We just recently had five new chicks hatch too. The children love to watch the chicks run around with their mother.

Here is Elijah testing out Sarah's bicycle with a "spare". An old wheel from a baby stroller. It didn't work well, but it sure was funny to watch him try and ride over the bumps.

Homeschooling is wonderful. These pictures show that even the baby gets involved in school time.

Lastly, we bought our plane tickets and after a trip to visit our new friends in Paraguay in late October, we will be flying to Miami. It will be a sad day when we leave here, but we look forward to our next step in the journey the the Lord is leading us on.

Well, I hope I haven't left too much out about our past month. We hope that all is well with you and yours.

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica