Love from Paraguay

Hello again, friends!! Welcome back to the blog! This week, a really good friend of mine is going to share with you all! As you know, we just had a group of people come back from Paraguay last week! Maya Yim had some thoughts for all of you. Please enjoy! :)

there is and was and is yet to be something special about this place.

from the day we arrived, i cried a lot (all good tears because God is so good). at our stop in brazil before going to paraguay, mr. jeff asked us a question. “do you know why we’re here?” not a what are you here to do, but a “do you know how you got here?” my thoughts consisted of a couple thousand dollars and five months of waiting. he proceeded to tell us about what God was doing behind the scenes telling us about this 11 year process of connections led by the spirit and faith. the spirit had sent us to paraguay where right now they’ve been trying to rebuild the church.

mr. jeff told us about how the church was in need of encouragement. we heard small ways of God’s movement like how the parents started a group chat and how these parents trusted us so much because a lot of these kids had never spent a night away from home. before we came, they asked if we should do camp because they could only send a few campers to camp. through faith, mr. jeff told them we should have the camp anyways. we were raising money, but later we didn’t need to anymore because the church started responding and we ended up with 60+ campers being able to come. what a privilege it is to have been chosen to be on this trip that God is using to expand his kingdom (this is spark notes version so you can ask for the full+ version if u want ur faith to be strengthened 🙀). i actually cried with mr. jeff during dinner on the first night (it was really funny bc everyone else was just minding their own business eating while we sobbed lol). anyways, i cried because when we arrived, the pieces of God’s plan over the past few years was coming together visibly. 14 different countries were being represented at the camp.

we had  4 sets of different directors from the u.s., nicaragua, paraguay, and honduras. it is so incredibly crazy to me the way the church needed encouragement, and how God set up this trip so perfectly. God will stop at nothing to save the people he loves. i found myself constantly singing “cuan grande es Dios” (how great is our God). on the trip home, i was looking back in my journal to see what i had prayed about since the day i first got on the plane to head to paraguay. God answered every single one of my prayers. prayers about campers. prayers about my experience. prayers about joy. we have countless stories of what had been done and it brings me to tears thinking about the goodness of who God is. even on the first day the kids went back home from camp, the leader of the paraguay church already had stories upon stories about campers going home and having changed, grandparents and parents who hadn’t been to the church in a long time, etc.

on each swamp corps trip i try to find a word or phrase to describe the country. taiwan was respect, honduras was joy drawn from gratitude, and my word for paraguay is chosen. there is no reason we should have been in paraguay. there isn’t a reason why paraguay should have been chosen either. katie and i had a conversation and she was talking about how much of an obscure place paraguay is. number one: logistically, the amount of things that had to happen in order for us to be there was so complicated we shouldn’t have been there. number two: no one really thinks about paraguay that much. it’s landlocked, it’s not a popular place, and people even joke about if it actually exists. you just don’t go there. these are however exactly the kind of people God chooses. throughout the week after that, i looked around and i thought to myself “i can see why God chose these people. he wants them. he believes in them. they will change the world.” seeing the changes of these campers when the got to the camp until the day we left was breathtaking. they already had the love of Jesus in them. it was like they already had this pile of matches in their hearts ready to be ignited, they just needed a small spark.

i believe that this spark sent from God is going to set off a wildfire. this is just the beginning. oh what an amazing privilege it is to be partners with the creator of the universe. i will be back paraguay. yo regresaré paraguay. rohaihu. te quiero mucho. i love you. 🇵🇾🤍

if you ever get the chance to go on a swamp corps, do it. estamos cambiando el mundo. (we’re changing the world)

all my love, maya :)

Well, friends, that’s all from Maya and I this week! Thank you so much for taking the time to read the blog. As usual, I’ll be praying for each of you to have a safe and encouraging week!!

Much Love,

Bri <3