We are the world

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A taciturn bunch, these Deutscher-Paraguayans. Jeff is convinced they're just so insular they're not interested in making conversation with an Englischer like him. But I'm convinced they're just not that into talking over breakfast - everyone looks glumly at his plate (of good homemade bread, served with cheese, cold meat, toppings, juice, fruit, yogurt drinks and of course instant coffee) set at a communal table topped with a lace tablecloth, eating silently. The bus was a bit more jovial, with some people apparently longtime friends, but still no one spoke to us. Oh, well.

The assembly is a different story altogether - many reunions and lively conversations as the hordes arrive aboard their creaking buses and enter through the well-guarded gates into a heavenly space. Well, heavenly until you realize the Centro Familiar de Adoracion is an unfinished monument to Pentecostal excess. Miles of hallways, multiple stairways leading to various floors, dozens of rooms of a generous size, two floors of parking underneath this mammoth footprint -- one of them currently serving as a massive concrete dining hall lit by fluorescent tubes, and what will be a 10000-seat, two-balcony auditorium with a huge stage and two enormous choir lofts on either side, the whole thing now set with rented chairs of the well-worn white plastic garden variety. The parts that are finished are lovely; well-appointed bathrooms, highly polished floors, soft carpets, massive windows. Then there are the missing sections of tile, the nonexistent elevators to those dizzying balconies and meeting rooms, the bare concrete stairs, the concrete mixing equipment off to the side of the dining area, the missing lighting and open ductwork in many rooms, and the many doorways and stairs blocked off with police tape -- too dangerous to enter. I can imagine the nail-biting that must have taken place when this space, agreed to at least a year ago, was so close to being uninhabitable as the date drew near. We're told that we're inaugurating it, rather than the congregation that is building it! I suspect in Canada the authorities would have forbidden its use, but this is Paraguay and every step on the city sidewalks is a risk to life and limb. Nevertheless, there's an ambulance standing by and three firemen in full gear present in the building at all times. Plus a staffed clinic!

The morning session had some pretty stirring stuff. Ishmael Noko, head of the Lutherans in Zimbabwe and a major figure in the Lutheran World Federation, was present to speak about the work that is being done to heal old rifts in advance of the Lutherans' 500-year commemoration, particularly removing the "anathemas" in the lutheran confession that led to the church's persecution of Anabaptists. His apology for the wrongs of the past and embrace with Danisa Ndlovu were a moving part of the day. What an irony, it was observed, that it took two Zimbabweans - both sons of Brethren in Christ women, who rose to a high rank in their respective churches - to heal the wounds of half a millennium ago in Europe.

Almost exactly 25 years after the speech by Ron Sider at the MWC assembly in Strassbourg, France, that helped launch Christian Peacemaker Teams, Sandra Rincon of Colombia spoke about the growth and mission of CPT, and its dreams for the future.

And Lars Ackerson and Jon Spicher told of their adventures and spiritual insights gained in cycling, over six months, the entire route to Asuncion from Harrisonburg, Va. In all those months, they said, they used their tent only twice -- so generous was the hospitality they received. Especially memorable to many was the story of how they'd been warned, going through Mexico, of the danger posed by the current "narco war" and how they might be lucky to get through that area alive. One day, they recalled, they were cycling through a desert when a white van slowly rolled up beside them; the window was rolled down, and an arm was extended, holding out ... a nice warm pizza. They took that gift as a sign of God's provision -- and a warning against prejudging people.

Lunch: Like Bulawayo, we're already seeing a pattern emerging in mass food service: a starch, topped with a meat sauce (mildly flavoured but good), coleslaw of a sort, a bun, an orange and a bottle of water. Boring, a little vitamin deprived, but we can live with it. It's a little gloomy under the fluorescent tubes of the low-ceilinged garage in which we eat, but it's always fast to get to -- a definite improvement over Africa, where the slow pace of dishwashing was one big factor in the very slow food service!

The afternoon was spent, for me, in a workshop featuring a bunch of leaders from various churches, including the Vatican and the World Council of Churches, wonderful Rachel Contreras from Chile (who's helping to turn her Baptists into Anabaptists), Evangelical Alliance and others. It was interesting to hear their stories and how they intersect with us Mennonites.

More glorious music this evening, including Hakuna Akaita, the kwazy-kwazy song everyone fell in love with in Bulawayo, which has made it to the status of written tradition and is part of our assembly songbook, forever preserved as part of the Menno liturgy. Love it!

Wilma Bailey (American) offered a rather too long but stirring theological rephrasing of our movement toward Creation Care, essentially making the point that we have lost sight of the fact that the Earth is the Lord's and not ours to make a mess of. So it's not simply that we're supposed to be caretakers, it's that we sin in not doing a better job of it. That's oversimplifying horribly, of course. But it strike me as providing a theological basis for what many of us are thinking about out of gut instinct.

Nzuzi Mukawa of DR Congo threatened to overwhelm us with his examples of the injustice of hunger, war and economic disparity that we countenance as a church and global people, but his stirring reading of Micah 6 and what it really means to do justice -- particularly his emotion-laden attention to the women who suffer sexual assault as an instrument of war in the eastern Congo -- made this a possible landmark sermon for this assembly. He gave some of us reason to squirm and all of us plenty to think about.

Not so long a wait for the bus tonight, but boy those diesel fumes sure bug me. These horrid buses are allowed to spew for half an hour at least each night before we finally chug home. After Wilma Bailey's speech, the ignorance on the street about these issues sure hit home.

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