Dear all,
I'm starting up my blog again, so I will have to change out my Moscow scene for something more Mexican when I get some pictures on my phone.
However, I'm going to write now about the story of our struggle -- with victory.
First, Kathy, Pai En, John, and I got to the airport two hours in advance. We found that because some flights had been delayed, the airport personnel wanted everyone to get in one fat, long line just to enter the terminal, with no respect for which airline or which flight. We nudged our bags by inches for over an hour just to get to the ticket counter. When we wheeled up to the desk, the lady told us that even though we had checked in before the cut-off time, we had not gotten our baggage to her an hour before the flight, so we were going to be bumped off. Everyone has their excuse, she tells us with grim, firm finality. And all flights to Mexico for the next two days are already fully booked, so we will have to wait for some undetermined amount of time on standby. Pai En texted the sisters about this, they prayed, and unaccountably the ticket counter lady, who was so adamant, called her supervisor. Dismay bloomed on her face when she was told to put us on standby status for the flight we were supposed to go on and to put our luggage through and to send us to the plane. She determined that our being granted such a reversal was only temporary. While she was tagging our luggage, she took credit for our success but told us that we wouldn't make it because we still had to go through security and get to the gate. Praise the Lord for His overruling. We arrived on time with our luggage.
Last night was unusually cold for Mexico City, so we dressed in enough layers to make this blog sound like it is being written from Moscow. It's not actually that cold (only 40 degrees last night), but buildings in Latin America don't have central heat, and the air warms up as the sun starts shining. It's hard to believe that bouganvillas and sweaters are in the same picture. This morning we set up the computers and checked the connections in our coats and boots. Someone had brought two small heaters from the States for the gringos and felt sorry for us, so one heater was plugged in for us and one for the translators. It's amazing how quickly a little bitty heater toasts up a great big workroom. But suddenly, the breaker box not only flipped the power off in the whole building but caught on fire. This was at about 10:00. Also, a sister turned the power off in the house where Kathy, John, and I are staying (two doors down from the training center) because of the fire, so there was no electricity for anyone. There were no lights, no computers, no copiers, no internet, no electric keypad entry for the front entrance of the training center, no refrigeration in the kitchen, and no hope for probably two days. However, by 11:00 men had come from the electric company (¿¡qué servicio es éste!?), and they switched the electricity from coming in on one box to two boxes (improvement). Praise the Lord for His miracle of normality (as Antonio put it--un milagro normal). Our heater is back in the box, and plenty of lap blankets are available if we want them.
Then there were the glitches of setting up the computers--to be expected, but no panic--and I think that all of those small things have been smoothed out by the end of our first day.
Well, we just received Ezequiel...
Yours,
Arla
