Dear prayer partners of Beryl
As I hadn’t heard from Beryl for so long, I tried this afternoon and got through to her on a very poor connection in the Chaco! We were both astonished. We kept losing contact but Beryl was able to tell me the following.
There was a partial closure last week but now everything is mostly stopped in Paraguay to stop the spread of the corona virus. There have only been a few cases as far as Beryl knows and she hasn’t seen any there, only pneumonia and Dengue fever, a lot of those.
All the large supermarkets are closed and the schools. There is a curfew at 6 pm and anyone breaking it gets a large fine from the police. They are allowed to go for essential foods in smaller supermarkets presumably and medicines. The Mennonite colonies are the same.
The petrol station at Rio Verde is still open because they sell fuel but no supplies are getting through so the shelves are nearly empty of any fresh produce. People are managing with what they had already. Beryl says she is ok because she has some basic foods.
The weather is very hot – 40 – 41 degrees C and they are entering drought conditions. Chris Hawksbee was in touch from Asuncion and said they had a little rain yesterday.
Tim Curtis was due to come to the UK in April. He was able to get on one of the last flights out of Paraguay, to France and arrived yesterday. Beryl doesn’t know if he has arrived in the UK yet. He is going to stay with his father and sister.
Severiano, who was helping Beryl, became very unhelpful and stopped working. Beryl thinks he is very anxious about his daughter and depressed. He left yesterday but his younger brother in law, Bernardino, has started work in his place. He is in his early twenties, Beryl said. Beryl is very grateful to the Lord for his provision of Bernardino.
Beryl asked about the situation here in the UK and I was able to say a little.
Communication was very difficult so after being cut off yet again, we said our farewells. I’m still amazed that we managed to communicate! Thank you Lord.
(This is all I could find from the BBC website and not specifically about Paraguay.
Is Latin America prepared to fight coronavirus?)
Is Latin America prepared to fight coronavirus?The region has yet to be hit hard by the virus but countries are already imposing drastic measures.