Travel and Preparations

On Wednesday, February 12, I (Bill) will be leaving Costa Rica again, this time for Paraguay.

On Saturday, February 15, Su Refugio will be celebrating the grand opening of the Centro de Esperanza (Center of Hope). This long-awaited facility is where we will focus our attention on training the people, especially, the women, of Tobati in skills so they can start small businesses that we hope will help them support their families.

Interior of the Center of Hope - 1 week before the grand opening!

In the photo, taken from the main entrance of the building, there is one large meeting room on the left and two smaller classrooms on the right. The large central part of the facility is open to allow for large gatherings. At the back of the building are two small 1-bedroom apartments.

Sandy and I will be co-directors for the use of the facility, coordinating the activities and trying to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Another reason I am going to Paraguay is to hopefully finalize our purchase of a piece of land so we can start construction on a new house. While we were in Paraguay a couple months ago, we discovered there are very few houses for rent (we didn’t find any available) and only a few houses for sale. The price to buy a house, and then make repairs, was as much as it would cost for us to buy the land and build the house that we want.

Tobati, Paraguay - Su Refugio to the south, and where we want to build

Paraguay does not use an escrow system, so it is basically bring a pen and a bucket of money: sign the papers and hand over the bucket. We tried doing this from Costa Rica but it just didn’t work out. Without an escrow system, we could not find a way to get the money to Paraguay. We don’t have a bank account, the person I gave power of attorney to sign for me does not have a bank account, and the people we know with bank accounts did not want to accept large transfers for fear of government investigations as to why they were receiving so much money. Banks trying to avoid money-laundering have created problems like this.

Closeup of the land we are trying to buy

Prayer requests:

• safe travels (I will be carrying a lot of money – but less than the $10,000 limit!)
• good weather and turnout for the grand opening – that people will come to learn more about Su Refugio
• clean transaction while buying the land – we already know the homeowner adjacent to the land we want built his house slightly over the property line and we have to fix the documents, in addition to buying the land… Welcome to Paraguay! I was told