Arrival

Ok, so we have arrived. 14 hours after leaving Columbus,... bleary eyed from lack of sleep on the plane, and hungry. (Airline food just doesn't quite fill you up)

After church at Grace Fellowship, Andy drove us (Paula, Jared and I) to Easton Town Centre in Columbus. Jared's girlfriend Rachel met us there and soon Miranda showed up with her boyfriend Ben and best friend Alaina. The eight of us ate at the Mongolian BBQ there and had a wonderful time. Between Paula and I embarrassing the kids to Alaina making friends with a piece of calamari prior to eating it, we all spent a lot of time laughing.




From there we all went to the airport to say our last "so-longs" as Paula and I checked through security. Our gate was at the extreme far end of the terminal (isn't it ALWAYS!), and we had an hour or so wait until our flight to Dulles (Washington DC). We were on an Embraer RJ145 Amazon which seats 3 across... good thing it was only for an hour. At Dulles we had just about 2 hours to change terminals (A to D). We got there and I plugged in the laptop and found a free WiFi signal to pass the time.

At 10pm, we boarded a Boeing 777 (wide body) for the 9 hour flight to Sao Paulo. It was dark when we left and we watched "Where the Wild Things Are" (not highly impressed). We tried to sleep after that, and Paula was a bit more successful at it than I was. Eventually I tuned in another movie (Cars) while Paula fidgeted around trying to find a comfortable position. 5 hours after we took off, the sky started to brighten up in the east. It was weird, cause my body still thought it was only 3am. It was 10:30a on Monday (Sao Paulo time) when we pulled up to the terminal. We got our luggage very quickly and walked right through customs. We had an hour at that point to make our connection to Belo Horizonte on the national airline, TAM. But when we got to the check-in counter the line was a mile long... and it wasn't moving. After about 20 min I heard a attendant mention something that sounded like "Belo" so I raised my hand and repeated "Belo, Belo" ... he waved us forward and got us right to the counter. 5 min later our luggage was checked and we were frantically looking for our gate. We made it in time, but it was a closer than I cared.

An hour later we landed in Belo Horizonte. We met Tom and Kathy as we picked up our luggage once again. They took us to a nice "churrascoria" called "Baby Beef." It was a delicious treat. The servers would come to our table with a selection of cooked meat that they would slice off on demand. I had prime rib, sirloin, lamb, and even ... (shock) chicken heart!

Finally we got to their home in Nova Lima, and what a sight! The panorama at the top of this post is the view from their home... and the picture does NOT do it justice.

We both thank the Lord for safely delivering us to this place. Please pray that He will begin to reveal our purpose here over the upcoming weeks.

Also, please remember Miranda in your prayers as she left today (Monday) for a 2 week deployment to the Caribbean, followed by 6 weeks in Turkey.