Occasionally people have asked us if our kids go with us on short term mission trips. They always have. In fact, Naomi's toilet training was done partially on a bus in Mexico. Rose learned to go up and down stairs at the mission house in Ecuador. Now that our two oldest girls are in college, they are not part of this current trip to Paraguay, but Rose is. Here are some of the benefits we see in having brought her:
> She has become fast friends with Megan Sappia, an 11 year daughter of one of our host missionaries.
> In our recent trip to Ciudad Del Este, she and Megan played with daughters of two different Chilean missionary families. At one point the girls were running pretty wildly through the apartment playing some version of keep away. Megan acted as translator.
> We stayed in the home of Baptist missionaries in Ciudad Del Este. They have an 18 year old daughter, Jade, still at home. The three girls hit it off despite the age difference. This family fled Venezuela when Chavez wanted all Venezuelan youth to 'belong' to his military. Then,on the 4th of July, Jade had the privilege of singing the American and Paraguayan national anthems at the American embassy here in Asuncion. Rose actually got to hang out with a teenager who experienced all of that.
> Rose has been interacting with kids and teens who don't speak the same language and had been communicating and interacting with them joyfully.
> She not only visited but ministered in a church where the congregation included people from Lebanon, China, Pakistan , Chile, India, and of course, Paraguay.
> She has seen one of the new 7 natural wonders of the world. (I'll blog about that later.)
> She has seen people living in tents made of garbage bags and seen that they are no less human than she is.
> She's seen a monkey and dozens on coati-mundis in the Brazilian jungle.
> A Chilean missionary, Octavia, gave her her own hand carved Chilean toy as a thank you for Rose's mission work. This is a truly priceless gift.
> She took it upon herself to share the Gospel story with a squatter woman after a show in a vacant lot / cattle pen.
She is having a wonderful, meaningful experience here, and we would never deny her this. She is seeing a world beyond her usual world and seeing God work here as surely as he works at home.