Yamen and Amen!

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Breakfast is finally warming up at the Casa! Actually had a conversation this morning at the table, with folks from Chaco. And the morning started out great with a surprisingly good performance of the Faith & Life Men's Choir from Canada, with a soloist from Paraguay who used to sing with them when he lived in Canada. Sithabile Ndlovu of Zimbabwe was a most interesting speaker - a young black woman taking part in the south-to-south YAMEN! exchange program in Brazil, where she had learned a good deal of Portuguese (I'd heard her in the ladies' room earlier and wondered about that!) and a bit of Low German. Amazing. Whoever helped paid for that, it was money well spent in shaping a future leader of the global church. How cool to hear a kiwi accent at this event! -- Chris Marshall of New Zealand did the Bible study.

Later, I mopped up my one task for the week by pinning Rebecca Yoder Neufeld down for an interview on her role as interpretation coordinator. And had an interesting conversation with Andy Prinz, who had popped up on stage several times as an interpreter and dressed in Arab garb to say the Lord's Prayer in Arabic -- and turned out to be Jeff's old college roommate! He's from Uruguay, fluent in Spanish, English and -- since he's been working in mission in Morocco for 20 years, Arabic. Neither one had recognized the other, but Jeff put it together after reading about Andy's workshop.

Finally, the weather is warm, and everybody's taking advantage of the sunshine to enjoy ice cream in the Global Village while sampling the music and other activities - some intriguing flavours produced by "Lactolanda" -- one of the mennonite dairies, including "flan" -- quickly becoming Jeff's South American vanilla. Bumped into the Brennemans again at the ice cream stand, where Quinn was sampling some mate' tea, and had a great chat.

Also found Rebecca, finally feeling great after getting some antibiotics for the strep throat she'd been suffering, in a workshop on new styles of worship led by a guy from the Netherlands. Kinda cool all three of us picked the same one, although I had to leave early to do my interview and when I returned R. and her buds had departed ... it WAS a little slow, since the whole thing was being repeated in German.

The evening service was fantastic. The music has really gelled at this event, and I think I've finally figured out how to sing those Spanish lyrics, with their many slurred syllables.

The Paraguayan Mass Choir was maybe unprecedented - a grand mixture of Germanic, Hispanic and native Mennonites singing together - kernlieder and Spanish both. It was inspiring to see, and hear. Danisa Ndlovu, the new president of MWC, spoke; Lily Kachhap of India led in a prayer for the global chuch, while Melani Susanti, the young woman from Indonesia who served at the UN, led a prayer for creation -- another major theme at this event. We sang throughout the communion service, which involved tiny buns (zwieback dough??) and dixie cups of juice, distributed through the seats and taken together. Afterward, Larry Miller called up to "join the circle" some of the scores of people who had contributed to the assembly, pointing out that the average age of the paraguay office folk was only 25! I was sorry not to be able to include this wonderful evening in our report to TUMC.

Sad to think this was our last evening together, many goodbyes already being said as some people prepared to leave early the next morning -- some to Peru and what's shaping up to be a Mennonite pilgrimage up Machu Picchu!

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