John and Rachel McDonough

News from Paraguay October 2024

Summer is here. Hot, Hot, Hot!

Family Update

What happens when your fifth birthday party gets rained off? Your Paraguayan Auntie (who makes chipa with you every Easter) offers her business' event hall, with kids play area, and you end up having the fanciest birthday party you could ever have imagined.

Sometimes life here in Paraguay really doesn’t go according to plan in ways we could not fathom in England. Storms and power cuts that last for days meaning there is no running water at church (a luxury, it turns out, we had gotten used to very quickly), classes at school get cancelled and, most devastating, ballet class gets cancelled!

Yet, our family finds that in these moments we are blessed beyond belief as our friends gather around us and bring joy to our kids. It has been a strange few weeks of illness, cancellations etc., but our kids haven’t even noticed the changes as they have been able to reap different blessings after blessings: seeing friends from other missionary families makes up for missing classes (especially when it involves yummy food), best birthdays ever!, replaced a small garden get-together and missed ballet class with the creating of a group of church kids working together on a dance to prepare something special for the Christmas party.

Praise God that His plans are perfect!

The only problem we have now is convincing our nearly nine year old to plan her birthday get-together with normal expectations. Haha. Who knows what might happen!

Thank you to everyone who sent greetings, presents and cards for Jesse. He felt very special and loved by you all. Although the water gun fire extinguisher, that was sent by our sending church, may soon go mysteriously missing, as a little someone keeps shooting the drying washing as it hangs on the line. ;-)

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Church Deposit Build

We need to build a deposit to store the church's benches and chairs. As you can see in the photo below, the roof where we store the church benches, chairs, pots and pans, is old and falling in. Well, with the support of a huge blessing from All Nations (Reading), and several individual supporters, we have been able to start work on building a new deposit. We will let you know how this build goes.

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Pig Pen

When we do big outreaches, we cook up a big pot of food and eat as we share the Good News. Our church members are extremely eager to give to the ministry and vision they have for their church. If we were to see our members on a purely economic perspective, then we would see them as low available fiat-money families. But they are so generous, knowledgable and giving (from the little that they have), and this is not in physical 'cash', but is in their time, produce from their fields and hands.

Giving from your harvest, crops, first fruits, is something that our members, as church here, can do freely and generously. And tending to livestock is something they grow up with doing and knowledgeable about. 

So, we have this great vision to build a double pig sty and separate chicken coup for the church to have some ministry animals. Six to eight pigs and 20+ chickens can be maintained/grown on the first fruit offerings and time-tithes from our members. 

We just need to build the sty and coup, buy the animals, and then the theory is that these will reproduce, grow, and the church, blessed from their offerings and care for these animals, can bless those in their community and beyond.

We are aiming to have the sty built by the end of the year through the church men giving time to build the structure. We are hoping to be able to buy the livestock in the new year.

If you are now wondering, as we did: How much does a pig/let cost? Whats the going rate on a rooster? Do we need to break the piggy bank to build a chicken coup? Well, the going rate would be: £44 for a pig and £2.30 for a chicken.

If you would like to support (and even name) a pig or chicken or help with the building of this vision project, then please click on the donation link below and in the in the message section write: M-PRY CP pigs

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Audio Bibles Calling

A HUGE thank you to Elim Community Church in Carlisle and several individual supporters! Since sharing with you about our desire to get the Word of God to those who are illiterate and find accessing printed Bibles difficult, we have been so blessed by your response.  Through your giving, we will be able to buy over 15 of the devices we told you about for donating to people so that they can listen to the full audio mp3 Bible in Guarani.

No-one will miss out though! If someone is literate, or has their own device, then because several more of you have given as well, we are be able to buy extra SD memory cards, onto which we will put the full audio Bible, as well as the Jesus movie mp4, and teaching material mp4. We will then give them these SD cards to put into their device.

Through your giving we estimate that 42-69 people will be hearing the Word of God! You are a blessing to us and our ministry. Thank you!

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Thankful for. . .

• our supporters
• some recent answers to prayer for the health of some children admitted to hospital with severe pneumonia that have been fully healed and returned home.

Pray for:

• spiritual roots to take to the new grounds in which they are planted. For growth and fruit to come.
• the practicalities of ministry as we go into the Christmas period and start of a New Year.

Many blessings,

The 4 McDs

 

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