The weekend went along rather well. I tried to rest, and for the most part I was able to. My wife, as usual, cooked the best dishes in the whole world, and I just sat with her, talked, was available, joked, laughed, etc., with her all weekend long. We sat in our porch, watching the sunset while drinking tereré. She had some discomforts on Sunday, and we decided it was time to see the doctor. Please pray for her health and safety.

When we married, we had two dogs: Loli, a female poodle, and Keeper, a very old German Shepherd, a gift from my in-laws. A month after our marriage we bought Raisa, a beautiful female mutt-like Rottweiler (she looks like a mix of Rottweiler, Doberman, and German Shepherd). With time, Keeper the German Shepherd died because of his old age, so Loli and Raisa became the two only dogs we had.

Later, one day both Raisa and Loli got in heat. All of a sudden, we had Canine National Convention in our backyard ;). Every stray dog from miles around got into, or at least tried to got into our home (Unsuccessfully, I might add; the bitches were all locked up). One of the dogs wanted somehow to stay at our home, and my wife took a special liking to him. This was a smallish dog, with long body, very short legs, and a long, curled tail. He had the peculiarity of making some noises with the throat, so we called him “Ronqui” (from the Spanish roncar, to snore). He liked us and was a very good guardian. The funny thing was that he was collared, but showed no intentions to go back to his home.

Problem was, Ronqui liked the streets too much. One day he escaped, only to come back two weeks later. We admitted him back, but with the understanding that if he escaped again, we would not let him in back. We took a dog from nowhere, without a clue about his health, his vaccines, and so on; if we were to have this dog, I told my wife, we could not afford him to go back to the streets, where he could pick all kinds of parasites and diseases back. Well, last Tuesday he escaped again, and we knew that we wouldn’t let him in.

Meanwhile, my brother in law, who bought Hummer (Raisa’s brother), asked us if we could have him in our home. He was getting married and moving to an apartment, and he liked our expansive backyard for his dog. At that time, since we already had a male in house (Ronqui) we had to turn him down. He called again while Ronqui escaped, and yesterday he came with Hummer, who at once was very happy to see his sister and having a big backyard all to himself.

Now, guess what: While I was waking up today, at around 6.30 am, I heard a ruckus on the front. Hummer was barking like mad. And there it was, Ronqui, trying to get in. My wife noticed him, and asked me to get him back; and with a very heavy heart, I had to tell her no. We made our choice and the dog made his, too. She cried, and I comforted her. I understood the heavy heart she had.

My wife loves her pets. I know and understand; she was raised in a family where the dogs were real helpers in the house, and very protective of the children. I also share her appreciation, because I was raised in a similar family, and I had the opportunity to raise a Dalmatian who had won all the possible awards in its lifetime, including the title of FCI International Champion.

I am going to call my wife now, to see how she’s doing, and comfort a little more that tender heart of hers. Thank you, Lord, for giving me such a precious gift; allow me to be a good steward of our marriage.

Renaissance Master. You prefer representational
art – what you see is what you get, and looks
amazing! Whether you go with Da Vinci or
Raphael, you are realistic and somewhat
balanced.

WHAT TYPE OF ART ARE YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks goes to Terry.

When I arrived home I learned about the news. Miss Cecilia Cubas, 31, was abducted and is now reportedly being held hostage for a $1 million ransom. You can see English news reports here. It seems that it was, from the beginning, a carefully planned operation. The attackers had shotguns and M-16 assault rifles, among other weapons.

The really disturbing issue here is that Cecilia Cubas is daughter of former President Raúl Cubas. For a moment, sit down and imagine. How would you feel if some mobsters kidnap Chelsea Clinton? The feeling of insecurity in the country is overwhelming.

You may already have noticed that I fiddled a little bit with the template file ;). What I did is add some information about myself for the casual visitor, and a couple of blogrolls.

What’s puzzling me is my personal blogroll, blogsphere. Initially I used for that my own WordPress link, creating a category. What I wanted is to sort the links putting the “recently updated” first and with some emphasis, but it didn’t work that way. I then switched to BlogRolling.com (as you are able to see) and I also configured it to work that way, but it is not working! For example, Tim’s blog is right now below all others when it was recently updated, and with an excellent post on confirmation to boot. Any ideas on why this is so?

All in all, my hope is that these small changes are useful and comply with their purpose. For me, it was a fun way of learning a little bit of Word Press template code. Let me know if you have something to offer in the way of feedback.

As the Word says,

The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come…

(Song of Solomon 2:12a, ESV)

Happy Springtime! 🙂

Thanks goes to Tim.

Today is a special day on two counts:

1. It was exactly four years ago that the most beautiful and loving lady in the world called me long distance, from Asunción (Paraguay) straight to my Michigan dorm after a marathonic IRC session, and began to start something so wonderful I am at a loss of words to explain. In time, I came back to Paraguay, and less than a year after my arrival we got married. And here I am, your domesticated nerd and former unrepentant bachelor, happy as a clam with the fact that he’s being married ;). Thank you, my love, for bringing happiness and color to my grey life…
2. It is also on this day that I was born, 34 years ago. While I am usually shy and I don’t like to celebrate birthdays, I am very grateful to God for all the blessings and mercies He has shown all the way upon me. Lord, allow me to be faithful to your Kingdom and be a witness of the good news of Jesus. Give me patience, give me kindness, give me understanding. And thank You for your continued protection and blessings. Amen.

Thankfully, today is a rather quiet day. I expect my parents and siblings to come visit my home later in the evening.

Thankfully, Don Victorio’s surgery went very well. He was conscious all the time during the procedure. Next day (on Thursday) he was released from the hospital and went home, where he is continuing his recovery.

He is in a much better mood than while he was at the hospital, which is understandable. My mother in law told me that he is eating very well and willingly (quite an achievement!).

Thanks everyone for the prayers and intercession. Keep praying for him and his family.

This one, courtesy of Tim:

Which Office Moron Are You?
Rum and Monkey: jamming your photocopier one tray at a time.

This I took from Rae:

Take the What High School
Stereotype Are You? quiz.

(Hey, finally a quiz where I didn’t qualify as a geek! :P)

Don Victorio (my father in law) is about to enter the surgery room for the implantation of a pacemaker. To the effect he is now being carried from the Social Security Hospital (where he is being treated) to the French Private Hospital, where the surgery is going to be performed.

Please pray for the successful outcome of the surgery and the post-surgical evolution.

It still feels like yesterday. A classmate from the lower apartment called me and told me, “Do you know what happened in New York”? “No; what’s up?”, I replied. “Come and see”, he told me.

We went down the stairs, and when we got into his room, I saw a TV scene that looked like a bad B movie or directly from the book of Revelation… only that it was live TV.

All that people (including two Paraguayans)… all those selfless firemen, policemen, paramedics, and people who helped, losing their lives and knowing it… it was simply too much to bear. The people who defied terror and chose to offer their own lives in an airplane, or amidst the ruins… I salute you!

America, I salute you at full attention today. You showed the world your true backbone of freedom, courage and liberty that day. God bless America the beautiful!

Thus says the Word of God:

The earth, O LORD, is full of your steadfast love;
teach me your statutes!
(Psalm 119:64, ESV)

There is no doubt that the chores of daily living are difficult in so many times, and tiresome, with all the struggles and disappointments which we have to endure daily. Our Lord Jesus Christ is overwhelmingly frank when he tells us, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). Even so, our duty as servants of Christ is not to sink in despair, because he has overcome the world; instead, we are encouraged to always have in mind those things that are lovely, honorable, excellent, good and true (Philippians 4:8).

That is the reason why the Psalmist reminds us of that wonderful truth: The steadfast love, the mercy of the Lord, is in all the earth. Even in this world that brings us forth thorns and thistles, pain, sickness and sorrow, God did not leave Himself without witness; very to the contrary, evidences of His love and care for us sprout everywhere to the eye willing to recognize them. It is Him, and none other, who clothes in His glory to the lilies of the field; it is Him, and none other, who makes the sun rise over just and unjust; it is Him, and none other, the One who gave us the waters of the great sea, the silent majesty of the snowy summits, the lush and color of our tropical forest. It is Him, and none other, the One who freely gave us everything, and gave us this earth as our home, so that we might administer it with wisdom and care, bearing witness of the steadfast love of our Creator and Redeemer.

Is this earth, this world, this our home, the theater of God’s mercy. And we, the servants of Christ, are the ones who must show the world the power of God’s mercy, who fills the whole earth. And in order to bear good witness, we need to learn from God’s word. There lies the secret: to be willing to learn God’s will as stated in His Word, His statutes, and apply it to our daily life. May God allow us to show the world, by obeying His word, the mercy of He who had sent His own Son to save us.

Prayer
Our Lord and Father, whose mercy fills the whole earth: grant us, by your Holy Spirit, the grace of learning, knowing, and practicing the statutes of your Holy Word, so that we might be witnesses of your mercy that fills the earth, and show forth the love of Christ to every creature. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

I’ve been busy these days because Rev. S. is going to travel again. He is going to Dallas, TX, and also he plans to cross the border southward for a brief visit to Mexico.

My father in law is stable, but I think his worst problem is just himself. Don Victorio is stubborn in a way that mules would appear meek and mild in comparison. I guess that’s just right since his dad was a Spaniard who was even more stubborn. When the physicians in emergency care inspected him, they noted a swollen left ankle, and took X-rays just to be sure. It turned out that Don Victorio had an untreated, old sprain in the ankle, and as a result of the fall of the minor stroke, now he also had a fractured fibula. So, as first order of business, they put a plaster boot on his lower left leg and foot.

My goodness. He complained and complained and complained so much that the resident physician agreed to cut a little bit of plaster. When the traumatologist learned of this, he strongly scolded her, telling her that she should mind her own business and not meddle into traumatology stuff. Worse, a little bit later, my father in law took the plaster case off his ankle and threw it out, all by himself.

Meanwhile, he also claims that doctors want to perform “experiments” with him, and it is a real battle to have him take his medication and perform other duties. And since he cannot walk (due to his ankle…) and there’s no restroom inside the door, he is forced to use a bedpan, and usually one of my sisters in law has to clean him up afterwards; you can imagine how unpleasant the whole business is. Don Victorio the Spaniard is driving his family’s patience and understanding to the limits, and beyond…

Please keep praying for him. I really understand his situation and predicament, and I am sympathetic; but I also think he has to be more careful in what he says and does. As my wife said out of exasperation, he is making a fool of himself.

I plan to write today’s devotional and post it here later.

Here I am, swamped in work as usual.

Friday went off normally. Lots of work, church bulletin included. A bright note is that I saw KDE 3.3 released the day before; and after leaving the machine overnight downloading (download speeds went down to a crawl, understandably), I was able to install it. Oh boy, what a treat! Something I especially loved was the fact that, after being a victim of KDE Bug 73592 the KDE 1 Window Decoration is again usable. Yahoo!! And I see a review coming 🙂

But… saturday is my only day of rest, and Saturday morning is usually the only one in the week where I do not have to worry about alarms at all. But that Saturday started out badly. I got a phone call in the morning, while I was sleeping soundly. Believe me, I usually do not pick those calls, but we are amidst our father-in-law trouble, so we took the call.

Well, it was the guy at our print shop. I usually send him the church bulletin as a PDF file over email; but this guy waited till 9am Saturday morning to tell me the file didn’t show up. Groaning, I stood up from bed, got dressed, and picked up a cab for the office. There, surely, it was a bounce message from the printer’s ISP telling me that my message was bounced because the Paraguayan national wireless network (run by a stupid monopoly) is on some stupid blacklist who is employed by the stupid ISP.

I called the printer to know how could I send him the file, and he just told me, “Eduardo, don’t worry. Your email just arrived. I called tech support and they saw your message being bounced, and let it pass.” My goodness. I saw my morning and my rest being flushed down in a bad joke. And I was furious to say the least. I told the printer about my serious displeasure, and how much of a nuisance he was, and went back home.

On Sunday I taught the Sunday School class, and left church immediately. I was supposed to preach on the evening service; and thanks to the LORD I found an excellent text. I prepared the sermon, and the message went quite good. A lot of people loved it. Perhaps I might put the outline here just to see if it might be of benefit to someone.

On Monday Rev. S. came back from his trip to La Plata. He was all OK, and I was glad to learn that his sickness went away there. He was obviously happy, and I felt also happy for him.

Now, about my father in law: He is stabilized now. It seems that his condition was caused by an arrhythmia which in turn was sparked by a stomach problem. He is still in coronary unit, but the medical staff is looking to move him to cardiology unit. Treatment is still being discussed; a possibility is the use of a pacemaker, but the family is very reluctant to let him go through another heart surgery.

He has the usual discomforts brought by hospitalization, but he is already on his way to make his own way. He requested a swinging chair to be brought to him, together with his chess set (he is a FIDE National Master). He told my wife he intended to play with docs and nurses. He also requested newspapers, books and his Bible to read. Oh my goodness… it is good ol’ Don Victorio all over again.

My wife told me that he is moved by all your prayers; I told her about all the intercession coming in from this blog and the CS-FSLUG list and he was moved. Thanks, and please keep praying.

You might have notice a total lack of activity here after Monday, and that’s for a reason.

I’ve been swamped with work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Rev. S. was to go on a trip to La Plata (Argentina) despite his health, and I had to commute between office and his home to do some work, preparing a lot of documents, files, and related materials for his trip. Additionally, Rev. A. wanted me to write a piece on the philosophy of our Christian School. I don’t blame him, since I am both a trained philosopher and a member of the school Board of Trustees; but I was utterly unable to come up with something. I had to tell him that I couldn’t do anything. You can’t even begin to comprehend how humiliating this could be.

Because of all the hoopla, I was unable to prepare this week’s Prayer Bulletin and that’s why there’s no Devotional for this week.

Now, on Wednesday morning, sometime after my wife and I finished dinner (that’s Paraguayan dinner for you Americans; we dine late at night, 9pm being a good time for that) and we were preparing for crash the bed after a stressful day’s work, we got a phone call. It was my sister-in-law, and it was meant for my wife.

Oh dear. My father in law had apparently suffered a minor stroke. They called an ambulance which was due to arrive at the house anytime soon. Of course this caused my wife to go ballistic; she understandably wanted to be right there with her beloved dad. I had to instill some sense in her, telling her that she was in medical care with a particularly strong variety of flu, and her presence would do her dad more harm than good right now.

The ambulance took my dad to the Institute of Social Security hospital (IPS, after its Spanish name). He couldn’t afford a private hospital. He was admitted into Emergency Room at around 11pm that Wednesday, so you think that took care of it, right? Wrong!

My father in law was left in E.R. for hours. He was given oxygen and nothing else. Meanwhile, the whole family was frantically trying to get him inspected by a specialist who could determine his condition and to which sector of the hospital he should go. Meanwhile, his dossier was misplaced and almost lost; his diagnosis was lost; his tests were lost. An order to move him up to regular hospital care came two times, and two times the hospital beds were took by other folks. Another order was issued, to take him to Cardiology, but the E.R. droids were raising a stink because the doctor who signed the order was not a cardiologist. It was 6pm Thursday, and my father in law was still stranded in E.R., without receiving anything that remotely resembled proper care.

My wife was desperate. She went into the hospital to see what she could do, despite her health. She called me and asked me for help. After praying, I got an idea. I called Dr. MP, which is the new medical director of the Baptist Medical Center. He also happens to be member of our church and my student in Sunday School. Well, I called him and asked him if he please would call one of his colleagues working at the IPS Hospital, asking him or her to take some interest in my father in law’s ordeal?

It turned out that one of Dr. MP’s buddies back in medical school was the very Medical Director of the IPS Hospital. After some calls, Dr. MP called me telling me that the IPS Medical Director was looking into the matter, and he would see that my father in law receives proper care. Soon after that, my wife told me that he was being moved into the intensive care and coronary unit.

My wife came back home in dire need of some serious rest. I bought a junk-food dinner, we ate, and after hugging her, we crashed the bed. She really slept like a stone ;).

Please keep praying for my father in law’s health, and my wife’s too.

We had a nice weekend. I generally just tried to rest a while, and I managed to do so even though I had a rather large translation to do. What troubled me the most what the fact that my wife was very sick with the flu. She picked it out from me, and did not respond to it quite well. She was coughing during all of yesterday, and despite this she was very reluctant to go to the doctor.

I finally managed to convince her after a lot of coaxing, and she should be here in around half an hour so we might go to the doctor next door. Keep praying for her health.

On Sunday morning I taught the Sunday School class as usual. After that, the service was regular stuff. Thankfully, there was no drummer, so at least I was spared from that. Preacher was Rev. J.M., who as usual screamend on top of his lungs instead of preaching. The whole service was the boring soap-opera stuff; but I have to be at services, so let it be, at least for now.