San Jose Ara

Every city, town, or community in Paraguay has a patron saint to celebrate and call their own. My community´s saint is San Jose, or Saint Joseph, and his feast day is March 19. People of the church prepared a lot for this day, and spent a whole year fundraising in order to buy a cow to be slaughtered for the celebration. Here´s how the day went. It started off with a beautiful morning, cool but sunny, a good indication for the day´s weather.

Butchering began early.

Man, was there a lot of meat. And just about every part of the cow is used. In the pot on the right, you will notice mondongo, or stomach.

Church benches are truly multipurpose.

Old school and New school.

I was put in charge of the children´s activities last minute, which was fine with me because I wanted to host Book Club anyway. It was just a bigger and crazier version with various games, coloring, reading, and singing for about 2 hours.

Here, some of the meat gets roasted over a pit of charcoal behind the church.

Ña Venancia dices up some liver. Que guapa!

Carmen, Cristina, and myself. Cristina is one of the youth that I am taking to leadership camp at the end of the month.

Aren´t little girls the best?

Esther, Carmen´s sister, washes the dishes. It´s a constant process, so that 200 people can be fed throughout the day. Esther is also coming to leadership camp with me!

Community ladies prepare food, eat, drink, and socialize.

This dad helps out his kids with cutting up their meat.

After the big lunch, soccer games ensued, as well as 4 year old´s birthday party, for which I was the photographer. Look at that moon!

Here´s another shot, with the barbed wire fence.

Here I am walking back from the party with my neighbors.

After a quick shower and some dinner, it´s back to the soccer field for the San Jose dance party. I went with my friend Carmen and my neighbor boys Richar and Blasito. Carmen and I had a BLAST, dancing the night away. Then we came back and she slept over at my house.

All in all, a very fun day, to celebrate Saint Joseph and the sense of community here in San Jose Boqueron. I´m so glad that I got to be a part of it.