We made it!
We were supposed to have loaded the truck early Monday morning, travel here to Croata on Monday afternoon, and possibly even unload that evening or wait until Tuesday morning. Instead, they sent the wrong truck on Monday morning, and we waited until Monday afternoon at 3:30 for the right truck to arrive. The men loaded the truck until about 6 p.m. Then on Tuesday morning at 8:30 they called to say they were leaving. We met up with them along the way and went with them the rest of the way. When we stopped at 1:15 for lunch at a main town, the driver told us he needed to put air in one of the tires. We left there at 3:30. Here sunset is at 5:30 and it's completely dark at 6:00, and they still needed to get up the mountain. We were praying so hard that they'd at least get up the mountain before dark, and the Lord did it! The truck reached the top of the mountain and we looked down at the clock and it was 5:15. We arrived at Croata at 7:00. What takes us 4 1/2 hours by car, took them about 6:45 minutes. But it was a long day. The boss called and told them they had to have it unloaded that night and drive home to be at work at 8:00 in the morning. Well that was impossible and unsafe, besides we couldn't find the keys to the front door and it took Todd and James (our coworker who met us with supper) an hour to break into the door. The keys must have fallen off his key ring. We had another copy in the safe in the middle of the packed truck. So we ended up waiting until morning to have everything unloaded. James and Molly took the kids and I to sleep in beds to their home about 30 minutes away and Todd stayed to be with our stuff. Biscuit also "enjoyed" a long ride in our pickup truck and couldn't contain himself with all the new smells at this new place.
We knew that we couldn't expect an uneventful move, and all in all there was nothing serious to report. Most of our belongings arrived in one piece. We hope we treated the moving guys well and took care of them. We pray that our testimony to them and those who are watching us will be of salt and light, shining like stars as it says in Philippians 2:15. In fact those verses have been a theme in our lives lately. Here they are and we would ask for you to pray for us specifically to be like it says here.
Philippians 2: 15-16a--"Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life..."
So since then, we have been trying hard to get things set up--we have come to realize that what fit in the house in Fortaleza is not fitting so well in this much smaller house. We are steadily getting things set up. It's not as simple as moving into a home in the U.S. that has all the washing machine hookups, etc., ready and easy to install your things. No, here Todd had to chisel the cement and put in the water line and the electrical lines. The whole kitchen consisted of a big laundry wash basin type sink and a wood burning clay stove. Today Todd worked on building a platform out of bricks and cement to put a kitchen sink in it. He has also swept every clay tile free from cobwebs and bird's nests, so that it won't be so dusty and messy on our stuff. Besides painting every room and another myriad of little things. But what we have realized is that this home is much nicer than what most Brazilians live in, at least in the Northeast part of the country. There are some nicer than this one in town, but most aren't. That means that we are about in an average situation, and we hope that will make us more accessable, more aproachable to people of all economic situations here in town.
The kids are enjoying our big back yard and fruit trees. We have a orange lime tree that looks like a tangerine but is extremely sour. We've discovered it makes awesome juice, similar to lemonade. And we have a little orange tree, but they are green like lemons. We are looking for opportunities to enroll the children in music classes--suprisingly this is a very musical town. There is a brass band that practices everyday a couple blocks from here. Or maybe we can find some sports or something else to get them involved. We live right across from the main walking strip that people use all day for exercising. The main thing people do here to socialize is sit out on the sidewalks in the late afternoon. So once the work around here calms down a bit, I'm looking forward to do that.
Our next big thing is the mission trip from Dardenne. They arrive on Monday, August 2 and we will have a full week with them and then Todd's parents are staying a couple extra days. Please pray for our preparations for this trip. After Sunday we are going to change gears and work on the final details for their trip. We will be heading into Fortaleza on Thursday, the 29th, to get all that done. Then will only be back here to our home in another two weeks.
Well, that's all the news for now. Please pray for our contacts with people in town. I don't think anyone can quite figure out why we have moved to this little town at the end of the road. Or how they say "Fim de mundo," the "end of the world." I'll include pictures when we get things found and set up later on.
Serving together with you,
Todd and Julie Hendry
