Interesting things about this place!----> There are birds here that have orange dagger like spurs on their wings. They dive at you when you are on their territory and try to stab you. We know a guy that got cut open on the thy it left a scar. I was attacked several times they are the size of a chicken... Imagine a flying chicken that wants nothing but to kill you and has mini swords...

Apperant...ly my name directly translated into Paraguayan spanish means (someone whos wife cheets on them with their best freind) everyone laughes at me lol.

Someone was making fun of sam and how he doesnt speak spanish to their freind and then he looked up and said "yeah but I understand spanish" HAHAH I laugehd so hard.

The frogs sound like little girls screaming off in the distance here it scared sam and I when we first heard it.Super funny.

The tea here is AMAZING for those of you who know my infatuation with tea you realise how big a deal this is to me.

My Spanish is getting better and so is Sams! I am very proud of him.

We realised that you dont need a gym if you just use small children as weights to work out with like curls and a squat rack... Basically free gym memberships are perks to having kids in the future I realised.

Some times butcher shops are ironicaly used as vetranary hospitals here

We get lost all the time its really frustraiting.

Also... you have to watch your back when you buy water. I just bought a bottle of water. What I though was a regular bottle of water was actually just fizzy water with out flavor... it alwasy scares me when I think I just bought a bottle of water but NO its all of a sudden scary fizzyness in your mouth!!!! AHHHH. Any way this place is awesome inspite of the weird water

Something that is really sad is that its hard for people to get books here because the mark up price is so high. Bibles here cost like 50 to 100 bucks.. whichto someone who works in the field for 9 bucks a day... thats a big deal. My heart breaks for the people thave the desire to educate them selves and simply read a book but cant. Even more so for those who want to read Gods word but have a hard time finding it as easily accesable as we do in the US. We have a lot to be thankful for in the US.

We talked with the director of the refuge for kids with aids (gardin de esperanza) He was basically the coolest guy I ever met. He told us about the tragedy and blessings that God had placed in his life that inspired him and his wife to open Gardin de esperanza. I hope to share the story with you guys when we get back. These kids have HIV and aids and God has blessed them with helth and a loving comunity. Most kids with aids get dumped by their family because people are afraid to touch them their entire families abandon them because of something that they cant help. When they started Gardin de esperanza most of the kids they took in were on the virge of death and alwasy in the hospital because of their am immune system. HE said that God had blessed them and that none of the kids have needed t go to the hospital for 4 years. These kids are amazing and so full of energy and joy working with these people and these wonderful kids has been life changing and inspiring. The director talked about following Gods calling for your life. In paraphrased Spanish he said "My wife and I werent qualified at all but over time God taught us about Aids and HIV and he gave us resources and funding and the blessings we needed to make his calling for us happen. If you follow what God has for your life no matter where you come from or who you are God can use you for his glory and his kingdom. God puts it on the hearts of many people to donate and love these kids and with out God working like this the home could not function and this is how we know we are doing the will of God" SUPER RAD! I was so inspired. Love you guys.

coicom and things to come

Hey y´all we are helping out at the home for kids with aids and having a lot of fun there and with Sams family im sitting next to his cousin alijandro and he is rad. Any who pray that we dont get stressed out because of the language barrier and that we dont get lost any more... thats been happining a lot and for health. Any way we love you guys and thanks for the prayers. Also we wont have access to internet after we are done at the aids home we will be starting working with Jesus Responde al mundo de hoy which is a cool organization that evangelises  to lots of people in different cities. With Jesus responde we will be working on a huge event that will happen in asuncion called coicom where several influential speakers will be presenting theological ideas such as Josh McDowell whos books have inspired both Sam and I.  We are doing well though and will try to update when we can. 

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Today God answerd a prayer. We were hoping to find a place to pass the night while Sams aunt was out of town. We arrived in Asuncion and had a meeting with the director of the hogar del ninos con hiv and she said we sould stay with her. As soon as I opend the car door I was flooded with the most adorable kids they hopped on my lap instantly and called me tio (uncle in spanish) The next week is goign to be so awesome playing with kids and helping them with home work. No one here can pronounce my name so I guess my new name is tio cornelio and sam is tio samuel. Any way God is workin in our hearts a lot and in our conversations. I got a chance to share my testimony with some cool 20 something guys the other day and make some new freinds. Gotta love divine appointments. Any way I love you guys and thanks for your prayers. -Corey

sams update

So yeah, Corey has summed up a lot of the main, important aspects to our trip so far but the main thing is that GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS! And I was reminded by him that he does it on his own time, and usually to humble you and teach you something. This epiphany occurred to me while I was plucking weeds out of my grandmas flower bed on the 6th day. The reason we were doing this manual labor, was because we had just emailed a bunch of organizations looking for opportunities and had the rest of the day to do other things. So we were kind of ancy, and hoping we would get some responses and decided to finally just do some manual labor to help out my grandma who cant, because shes not able. It was in that moment of picking weeds that God taught me a valuable lesson: If I were to go to Paraguay, and the only thing I got to do was serve my predominantly non Christian family in ways such as pulling weeds, that is just as much missionary work and pleasing to God than volunteering 3 months of our time to a big, well known organization that everyone can praise us for and appreciate. If that was Gods plan for us while here, than there's nothing we can do about it. So in that moment I understood that God has plans for us and HE is in control; me and Corey are not, no matter how much we want to be. 1 hour after really meditating on this and thanking God for humbling me, we were bombarded with requests from 4-5 organizations to volunteer. I am thankful for the opportunities and will serve to the best of my ability, but I will keep what God taught me consistently in my motivation.
Since then, Corey and I have been having quite the adventure! Meeting people like Johannis who have given up a more lavish lifestyle to tell youths in a poor country about Jesus is really encouraging for Corey and me.
Apart from that, another awesome thing God is doing is allowing me to learn Spanish! With Corey here assigning me homework from a textbook everyday (I have my 1st test tomorrow) I feel like im making steady progress. I feel that God wants me at my families house for these couple weeks to learn the language, because not knowing the language- i found- really limits your potential in connecting and interacting with the majority of people here.
Also, I just want to really thank all of you that are at home and consistently reading our updates and pray for us regularly, it really is the biggest encouragement to us that you guys are keeping us in your thoughts and prayers! I think our main prayer requests are: safety (as Curry noted), a humble and generous heart, motivation to work hard in 90+ weather, and that God uses us to the best of our abilities while volunteering.
interesting stories: Corey losing some of the most important things he brought: license and iPhone, Spanish textbook, and all of his boxers.. the fact all Paraguayans call Corey 'Curry'. buying sparkling water thinking its regular water. And every bus at least 10+ people over maximum capacity.

sorry for not updating in awhile

“Dude, this whole thing is a spectator sport,” I said to Sam as I shouted over traffic. “Yeah, and no one realises it but us!” That was pretty much the dialog this morning as we waited for our new South African friend Johanas to pick us up on the side of the crazy free way Mariscal Lopez in San Lorenzo. We saw people almost die in epic car crash flames about every 2 seconds. The amount of near death experiences on the streets in south America is remarkable. Just about every turn you make there is some huge unyielding bus that is going 10 mph over the speed limit headed right toward you. or someone stops in the middle of the hi way to pull a u turn in the middle of 50 mph traffic. in the midst of all this there are people riding rickety carts pulled by donkeys and there are people running into the street; some to cross and other to do magic tricks in the road for a tip or even worse to sell you bicycle tires or chipa. The street is so fascinating it almost made our 1 hour long wait worth it. There are so many interesting things going on in Asuncion that you cant really be bored as long as your in public. While people are cutting each other off and tail gating and breaking every possible US traffic law I thought to myself man i haven't seen one person get up set this whole time. People in the us freak out and cuss at each other if someone cuts them off in the free way but here the people are so chill and relaxed that it doesn't phase them. The people are by far the best part of South America, that is besides the food. In stores in the US some times I feel as though I am being harassed by the employees as they repeatedly ask me how I am doing and what they can do for me. Maybe its in my head but a lot of times it seems ingenue and annoying. Here in Paraguay people mind their business and don't approach you. They wait for you to approach them. Just about everyone puts on real smile when you talk to them. People here are really creative with he way that they make money. You can buy just about anything you want from some random street vendor before you even get to the super market. A source of pride for many Paraguayans is their official bilingualism. Everyone here speaks at least two languages. Yep Guarani (a native language totally unrelated to Spanish) and of course Castillano AKA Spanish. While eating dinner with Sam's family in Asuncion we changed between English, Spanish, German and Guarani. That's right, just about everyone spoke three languages besides Sam and I. I felt pretty outlinguisted in comparison to them (except I just made up for it by making up my own word just now ) though, my ego has been a little crushed by the linguistically gifted inhabitants of this country I also am inspired by them and have just found more fuel for the fire of my passion for language. Basically this place makes Americans look like pansies that complain about everything like having to learn a second language or about traffic. Its pretty awesome being here amongst such interesting people while practicing my Spanish. BTW who knew that there were so many Germans in the middle of South America? I sure didn't.
This morning was an adventure to say the least. After getting picked up by Johanas we went to the main headquarters of Jesus responde al mundo de hoy which is an organization that reaches out to youth in Paraguay through soup kitchens schools and through local churches. We got a chance to meet everyone and lean about what we will be doing. We will probably rent a dorm at a local bible college in a town just out side of Asuncion called mbey (I think is how its spelled) where we will be staying for about a month to help with a giant event called coicom and then with some soup kitchens and out reach ministry where we show cool movies to kids, hang out with them and talk to them about God and their relationship to him. We applied to work with a program called servome before we left. We were going to work with them at the mental hospital in Asuncion but it turns out they had no positions available till after January. Which was totally fine because through all your prayers God has opened up so many possibilities for places for us to serve at. One of which is a children's aids hospital where we plan to stay for a few weeks and hang out with kids that have been diagnosed with aids and serve them. Apparently Aids is a pretty big deal down here and some people don't even believe that it is real. And we have a few other contacts. and places to serve as well. So any way after this week we hope to get cracking on some of our service work. Pray for us to have strength, energy, a good attitude and understanding as we gear up to volunteer.
Interesting stories: We totally missed the bus we needed to catch like 4 times. Sam walked into the door frame and banged his head on the top three times in a row. I broke a bed. Sam broke a cup of his grandmas. People stare at us all the time. The food is epicly awesome. We both have accidentally said very creepy things to people in Spanish unknowingly, and we helped a cool German lady make pickles.

Sam has awesome stuff to say also but he is being responsible and going to bed early so you will have to wait a day or two. Ok, Im done Love you guys adios ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao????????