We're Finally Here!!!

Before you start reading, prepare yourself, it's ridiculously long. I don't know how to make a long story short! Ok, here goes....

Well, it’s about 5pm Indianapolis time (9 hours after we left the house) and guess where we are……..Chicago!!! We arrived at the Indianapolis airport this morning at about 8:30am. But weather was bad in Chicago, so we couldn’t take off. We got on our plane about 11:30am, then we sat on the tarmac for a while, then we finally took off at 1:30pm. We got to Chicago at 1:30 Chicago time (an hour behind Indy) and watched our plane pull away from the gate without us! It was an hour later than it should have been, but we still didn’t make it. But even if we’d been on it, we would have arrived too late to Miami to get our flight to Managua anyway! So, here we are, supposed to be on the 3:10pm flight to Miami, which is now scheduled to leave at 6pm, maybe!! Thankfully the sister we’re travelling with, Leyla, has a sister in Miami so we’ll be spending the night at her house, if we ever get to Miami that is! So then our flight to Managua will be tomorrow, Wednesday, at 10:20am arriving at Managua around noon their time. So at least we have somewhere to sleep other than the airport, and we’ll be arriving to Nicaragua in the daylight instead.

So, that’s been the fun so far. Charley is at the desk right now making sure we’ll be on this flight and finding out where exactly our bags ended up!! We ate some lunch here, drank a coffee, and I was hoping to blog and email but the Wi-Fi here isn’t free – frugal airport!! And I’m too frugal to pay for access! So I’m writing this in Word and will copy and paste it into the blog later!

Stay tuned………..I’ll be back.

Ok, now it is Thursday morning about 9am. We’re at the house just hanging out at the minute, waiting to see who will be available to take us to the airport. “Why do you need to go to the airport?”, I hear you say! Wellllll……………we finally got a flight to Miami on Tuesday, and spent a very comfortable night with Leyla’s very hospitable sister and brother-in-law. Next morning we got up, went to the airport and checked in at the self-service computer. Went through security, and when we got to the gate, they acted like we were on standby and didn’t have seats for a while. But then it turned out that we had seats all along. Charley and I even got to sit in the exit aisle which means double the legroom – yay! The flight left about half an hour late but we arrived without problems…….or so we thought! We had never picked up our luggage because they said it was checked through to Managua. Well, for some reason or other, our luggage didn’t come on the flight we were on, and they sent ours on a later flight, and Leyla’s on an even later flight. So they told us to come back for the 8:30 flight to pick up our bags. So, after we were picked up at the airport we came to the house, then went grocery, internet, and cell phone shopping with Mario Robleto (the family from Indianapolis that live here who we visited last year). They were very patient and generous with us, taking us here there and everywhere and helping get furniture moved around in the house and stuff.

I don’t know if this is time for a new paragraph but that last one just seemed to be getting too long. So, we went back to the airport at 8:30 last night, which was practically empty of staff by then, and they told us that the warehouse where they put the bags was closed, even though that’s the time they told us to come back! ARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, our bags were in there, well in theory they are, but there was nobody to open the door! Thankfully we’d packed a few clothes in our carry on, so we have had some clothes to change into. Of course we don’t have any deodorant or soap or shampoo so………well……..you know!!

So, I’ll pause the typing for now and add some more once we’ve been back to the airport and hopefully got our suitcases! Poor Charley is walking around practically blind. He doesn’t have his glasses with him and didn’t have any solution for his contacts, so he’s squinting a lot. But he made some excellent coffee this morning so not all is lost. We have coffee, so that’s all that really matters!

Well, hello, I’m back again. Glad you’re still with me. If you reached this part of the blog I thank you for your attention so far and hope you didn’t fall asleep too many times along the way. It is now Thursday night, 9:30pm. So, where was I earlier. Ok, yeah, so Leyla’s brother-in-law took us to the airport to get our bags around 10:30am. On the way we stopped at a car rental place and got a car for the rest of the time that Leyla is here, then hopefully after that the truck they sent down here will have arrived and be ready to use. Charley is the driver and has done a very nice job of it today, despite the fact that it’s a stick shift and he hasn’t driven one in a REALLY long time! But he hasn’t killed it more than 10 times so far! Don’t tell him I said that. I’m pretty sure he won’t care to read this blog!! Nah but seriously, he’s been a really capable driver. I’m impressed. Especially the driving we did tonight but I’ll get to that in a minute, or ten.

So, we got our bags, no problems, nothing missing, all is good. Then we went to Catarina which is a little town with an amazing lookout on to a laguna that we visited last time we came.  It was lovely up there. I bought the most adorable dress you’ve ever seen for my cousin’s baby girl – can’t wait to see her wear it next summer – it’s so cute!! Then, well, I can’t hardly remember how exactly the day went, but we got home about 5pm. The Robleto’s came by to drop something off, and we got to see Wanda too since we’d only seen Mario Sr. and Mario Jr. yesterday. She’s looking very well and feeling it too, so that’s good. 

Then we decided to go to a meeting, so we got ready and left a little late, but off we went. Now, for those who don’t know, there aren’t really any street names or house numbers in Nicaragua. So, the address of the hall whose territory we’re living  was “de la Pulperia San Antonio km 19, 150m al sur, 25 metros al este”. That is “from the store called San Antonio, which is at the 19^th KM (of the main road we live off), 150 meters south and 25 meters east”. Quite an address right?!?!?! So we passed the Pulperia San Antonio, so we had to drive on a while until we could turn around, then drive to turn around again because the highway has a median you can’t cross in the middle. We stopped at the Pulperia to ask and they just pointed, so we drove down this “street” that I wish I’d remembered to take a video of, but it was rough to say the least. Hopefully the rental car survived the experience – I think it did. Got to the hall after asking a couple more people, and it was all dark and closed. No meeting!! But then as we were driving away a sister who happened to be at the hall for something saw us, and told us that they just changed the meeting to Friday instead of Thursday about 2 weeks ago. But we found out they only have two elders now, so maybe when the truck arrives we’ll attempt to drive back there again, but not in the rental car! 

So, we drove to the hall in Ticuantepe, which we couldn’t find, but we stopped and asked at Bethel. They closed the branch, but there are still people there maintaining the place and taking care of certain things so they directed us. We got there at 7:30pm, just in time for the song…………..the one before the Service Meeting starts! An hour late, but we got there. And it was lovely. Everyone said hello and we met the elders and had a lovely time. That congregation has 120 publishers (in a hall fit for about 80!) and 5 elders, 3 of which are still working at Bethel. Soooo…. I don’t know if that will be the congregation we’ll serve in. They have more elders than any congregation I’ve heard of around here! But it was nice to learn our way around a bit and get to know a little about the congregations in the area.

Well, I think I’ve probably spent way too long telling all these details. I hope you didn’t get too bored. Off to bed soon. Tomorrow, I’m not sure, maybe just trying to unpack and organize now that we have our bags. Since Leyla is only here a week she wants to do things so we’re doing whatever she wants to, which is fine with us. She said she wants to go to the beach, so I think we can work with that!!!!!

So, hopefully during these next few days we’ll figure out which congregation we’ll serve in. Thanks for reading and hope you’re all doing well. My mam told me that a lot of you have asked how we’re getting along, so thank you for thinking of  us. Hope you enjoyed the story of our trip here!!