It had been 27 hours since we left Alpharetta, but we finally made it to our final destination of Yrybucua in the interior of Paraguay. It was a long journey that had not ended with the disruption in Brazil over our connecting flight.
After we had left Brazil, thankfully on the same plane as our team, our flight arrived in Asuncion after a brief stop over in Ciudad del Este. When we arrived we deplaned and went thru passport control. Each of the team members were carrying a large quantity of items to be used in VBS, and at the Susannah Wesley School located in Quinta Linea. Our hosts had previously submitted a list of items we were bringing to customs. The key was to make sure that each individual declaration submitted by each team member all added up to the same amount of items that had been previously submitted to customs. The last team that came thru had their bags held in customs for 4 days because the declarations didn't match the list. We were very grateful that ours did match and cleared with out a problem.
When we started to retrieve our baggage we discovered that only a portion of the bags had made the flight. When we questioned the airline, they informed us that all but one of the bags were located and confirmed on the next flight arriving in 2 hours.
Our hosts, Christian and Angelica, and their two children were at the airport to meet us along with Ed and Linda Baker, another missionary couple serving in Paraguay. The team gathered what luggage we had and all piled into two crew cab pick up trucks and one Land Rover and left the airport to go to lunch while we waited for the remaining bags to arrive.
After a brief lunch at a local area shopping mall, we jumped back in the vehicles and headed to the airport to get the remaining luggage. En route, the clutch in the Land Rover went out. This was a little before noon on Saturday. We were able to find a garage that was still open and they began to work on the problem. We discovered that a high pressure hydraulic line to the clutch had broken and was leaking all the fluid necessary to operate the clutch. The problem then became where to get a replacement high pressure line for this vehicle. All the businesses of this type shut down at noon on Saturdays. The local garage started making calls to find the part. The other two vehicles went back to the airport and recovered all of the remaining luggage, including the one piece that was not confirmed (another prayer answered).
About 1:30 the garage was able to locate the part needed and sent a driver to go get it. Yet another prayer answered. We all enjoyed a coke from the local convenience store while we waited for the work to be completed. We were back on the road again about 3pm. All three vehicles headed for Yrybucua. We arrived at the compound about 6:30 Saturday evening.
Stay tuned for Day 3 of our Journey to Paraguay.
Mike & Melody
