For the last few days we billeted Favio Chavez, Daniel Allende, Fernando Maldonado, and Jose Rodriguez from the Landfill Harmonic Orchestra which is based in Cateura Paraguay. Cateura is built on a garbage dump on the outskirts of Asuncion. The people of Cateura are very poor and earn their living by selling, recycling, and using the things they find in the garbage dump. A few years ago they started making instruments out of the garbage. (In Cateura, a real instrument is worth more than a home!) Since then their orchestra has increased to many people. They now take turns traveling the world to play their instruments. Only 16 people came on this tour. Their next tour they are doing is to Madrid Spain! Here is a video of us playing our instruments with our billets.

At the concert, they had all the 500+ people sing “Amazing Grace” with them accompanying and then the director (Favio Chavez) said that this is the 1st time that we sang with garbage :).

On Monday night when they arrived, we had our friends, Hugo and Elana, over to translate for us… and eat dessert! The rest of the time we were on our own but with the few Spanish words we know from going to Mexico on missions trips, the few English words they knew, and the help of an English/Spanish dictionary (and a phone), we could make out what each other was saying. We also read out of our Espanol/English New Testament, and gave them Spanish tracts.

It was fun trying their instruments out. The materials that they make the instruments out of range from oil cans, candy tins, hairbrushes and shoes, to spoons, forks and cutting boards. Here Levi is trying the guitar.

This electric guitar was partially made from a cutting board 🙂

Josh is trying out  Fernando’s trumpet that is made of copper pipe and eaves-trough.

Andrew playing the viola after the concert.

Playing “Uno” with the guys.

And a group picture. It was fun hosting these guys (and communicating).