I knew the toughest challenge for us was going to be the saying good bye's in Porto de Moz and traveling there to Maraba'. Which by the way, it was. I think emotionally it was tougher and logistically. We had to pack up the house, say our last good bye's to the people we invested the most in and then travel. It's so much slower once you get outside the airports in Brazil. It's not like hopping in the car and going on a nice toad trip wtih nice rest areas and restautants. Ithere are no conveniences about it. I'll share that in another blog.
All toghether in travel from PdMoz to Maraba' exept for a night over in Altamira was 24 -26 hours of boat and bus travel. I thought the bus went well. We had a great driver, we had friends and we had the posh convenience of having our private bus. But even with that you wouldn't consider it a quick zip. We left PdMoz Friday the 19th at about 6pm in the rain and arrieved in Bitora at 6 am the next morning. I got a cab with the kids and drove 40 minutes to Altamira packed to the gill with our bags. Clyde stayed back with all our house stuff on the boat and waited for a truck to come and loat it up and take it to Altamira later that morning.
The next morning we loaded up the 20 some passenger bus with all our bags again and some of our house stuff like fans and the kids' bikes at 4:30am and were on the road by 5am. We drover 12 hours and arrived in Maraba' by 7:30pm Saturday night the 21st. (See the next blog for details on what it means to travel 300 miles by bus with 4 kids).
Rick met out bus at a gas station to show us the way to thier place. They have a place on the outskirts of the city with an enormous property that reaches down to the river. His vision is big and the city is huge and more industrialized to compensate this vision.
The bus pulled into the gate and down the driveway we saw an outbuilding lit up with people all inside sitting and standing. Deana was obviously gearing the gathering up for our arrival. The driver honked the horn and everyone cheered. It was a great relief to be in Maraba'.
We thank you for your prayers over the past 3 weeks while we get our family down here. The kids did really well. Everyone is healthy and we just praise the Lord for His faithfulness to get us here safe and sound. Now we will be at the Bergen's for a short time until we can find a house and get settled here.
A few things we need in prayer support and action support!
1. FINANCES...Starting up again takes cash. We don't know our budget yet and don't know how our support looks either. We trust the Lord we can get into a place that won't eat up a major portion of our budget with rent and utilities. We start looking for a place Wednesday.
2. TRANSPORTATION...we are really asking the Lord for a vehicle. Clyde would love to have a truck to do his exploratory trips to Sao Felix and it would be nice to have for getting around Maraba'. It's 3 times the size of Altamira. And then of course there is the maintenance for a truck. In the mean time we will look at buying bicycles to get around with for now.
3. THE VISION... It's long term gang! We are needing to really gear up for long term and that means doing things a bit different. We are blogging to make things aware of the needs.
We're praying for a team to work with us on the field, a strong team in finances and in prayer support. As we put one foot in front of the other, we pray that our vision will inspire vision in others.
Thank you again for your prayers and stay tuned to our blog as we update on the progress here as we are in Maraba' and in route to Sao Felix.
Blessings to you!
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