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Gwen & Mags Update recently received into the SAMS office:

• March 1 [pdf]
• March 2 [pdf]

Dear Friends,

It seems that Autumn has arrived as we have had some welcome low temperatures this last week. One morning we got up to 13ºC which made a nice change. We have also put our clocks back which means it is once more still light when we get up!

School has been busy but we have been able to get down to a lot of work so far…except for today! School is closed for the day as there is a general strike. Many people feared it would be violent. Roads are also blocked off although their efforts don’t appear to have been too effective! Anyway, with staff coming from far and wide we couldn’t risk opening school with the majority of staff unable to get in. We were also concerned for the children’s safety and know many parents wouldn’t send their children anyway. Even so, we did have a number of complaints about closing. Many other schools also closed.

The lower secondary managed to get away for camp the other week. The 7^th and 8^th grades went to our sports ground and camped in tents…until the rain came. Mags reckons the rain came just at the right time as they had the children playing games that left them very muddy so the rain managed to wash a lot of it off before they went for a shower. It was a very good camp and Pastor Ronnie and one of the teachers, Ariel, spoke on Noah. Mags came back saying how well it had gone apart from the lack of sleep!! 9^th grade went to camp and climbed a hill where they had to cook their own food once on top. This involved a walk of 25kms altogether. Pastor Donald went there and again, spoke on the theme of Noah. That too was also a very good camp.

Last week we had our school anniversary service in which we also remembered our founder, Auntie Thea, who died in January. It was a lovely service and everyone seemed touched by it. The pupils listened well. Pastor Ronnie spoke on Zephaniah 3:17 which was the verse from Auntie Thea’s funeral. Ronnie spoke well with a great visual aid which involved a few of the children. It made them all laugh but he got his point over.

It’s been hard getting the secondary pupils to settle after the holidays. Many of them are not motivated to work hard as there are no national exams to pass to get to university. There are, of course, some who do work hard. The National University requires an admittance exam but many others just require fees! Many of our pupils know they’ll go to university and they’ll have a job afterwards which doesn’t urge them to work hard now! They also have an active social life and this also affects our school routine. The Ministry of Education doesn’t have a legal requirement of how many days the pupils attend school nor fines and punishments for those who miss school. Many of ours go off travelling in term time. We’d love you to pray for our secondary pupils, that they would settle and take school seriously and that they would know the Lord’s hand on their lives.

We were missing Munchie ( the dog who died in November) and this week we welcomed the new arrival. Splash, came all the way from Uruguay, brought by friends coming from Argentina. He’s now 6 months old and still finding his place in the family. I think he hoped to be the Alpha male but Viking has put paid to that!! He’s very sweet and cuddly and loves water…hence his name!

Well, we’ve had a very profitable day. Both of us have managed to get quite a lot of school work done and were glad of the time to do it. Mags is now baking with Splash tripping her up at every turn!

Thank you to everyone for all your support and prayers. They mean a lot to us.

God Bless, Love Mags and Gwen

Paraguay Prayer Calendar March April 2014 received into the SAMS office:

• Paraguay Prayer Calendar March April 2014

Gwen & Mags Update recently received into the SAMS office:

• February 1 [pdf]
• February 2 [pdf]

Dear Friends,

School is now well and truly underway! Our visit to the UK seems like ages ago! We started back in school the first week of February with just the staff for the first 10 days or so. We started our year with a service in the cathedral where Pastor Ronnie spoke about the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom.

After that it was all hands on deck to prepare the classrooms ready for the children and also for parents’ meetings. Before school started we had meetings for the infant, the new first grade and seventh grade parents. These all went well with the main question being, “How are we all going to get into school once they start to dig up the road?” Fortunately, we had a plan for this which involves going through the land round the chapel and the diocesan office and then taking a back route into school. Fortunately, this has gone well with many parents asking to continue this way once the road is finished. They seem to have finished digging up outside school now and are starting to fill in the holes but the dust in school has been awful. We have had many weeks with little rain making the dust worse. Yesterday we had a very big storm which has helped with the dust issue at least!

Gwen missed the start of the new term as she had a bad migraine the day before school started. She was still being sick by evening and so was taken into hospital and put on a drip. You can’t take chances in 40ºC as it is very easy to get dehydrated. Anyway, she was in hospital for 2 nights and so missed the first 2 days of school.

Mags had to carry on with the start of the school year. The 6^th form came in well in the rain and we had our church service at the end of the first morning with Pastor Ronnie speaking about God’s word being a lamp. All the more appropriate as we nearly had to postpone the service because of a power cut. On the Monday we were both back in school and ready for full days. It’s always hard after a holiday and the pupils always find it hard to settle after being off for two and a half months. They are starting to settle now.

Mags is back with her maths classes and says the pupils seem to be settling and working well. She went to 6^th form camp last week which was to prepare the 6^th formers to lead on other camps during the year. It went very well.

Gwen is back with the infants and has 30 in the class. They are still very challenging and learning to sit still! One boy went into melt down the other day as he didn’t want to write his letters to fit into the space in the book; he wanted to do big letters and there was no convincing him. The same boy  decided he’d never eat another apple after hearing the story of Adam and Eve! Gwen is also in 5^th grade 2 afternoons each week and enjoying the challenge of English grammar!!

Since the start of term we have had yet more parents’ meetings and they all seem to have gone well. The parents seem quite calm and happy with things. The 5^th and 6^th grades are out at camp now until Friday 28^th. They went in the rain but it should be warming up.

We came back to school to find our science teacher announcing he was going back to the USA. It wasn’t a good time as the timetable was all finished and now would have to be altered again. The physics teacher also said he was unable to come. We asked another teacher in school to take physics and she was happy with that, but it’s taken a number of interviews to find a science teacher that could cope with books in English and be a Christian also. We now have a full staff and the timetable has been sorted out yet again!

The storm yesterday was very bad and many people couldn’t get across the city because of flooding on the roads ( like the UK?!). We couldn’t get out of the house for a while as the water from various streets meets in front of our house and then goes down a huge drain. It was under our gate and heading up the drive so we waited for it to go down ….  as did many others in school. Still, it made for a nice, cool night with temperatures around 17ºC  which made a pleasant change from 40ºC and more. I think this month has been one of the hottest ever with most days being over 40ºC.

We are both fit and well. Our animals are in fine fettle too and there is the promise of a puppy in the next few weeks( we hope). He has to come from Uruguay and so is dependent on who can bring him!! Again, it’s through friends that we are given these dogs.

Many thanks for all your support and prayers. They are much appreciated.

God Bless and lots of love,

Gwen and Mags xxx