Here is a picture of what our minds feel like after a week of classes…
Blessings from “frio” Portugal! (Frio means cold…we thought we could escape it, but the weather followed us☺
We arrived last Sunday after a long, but great trip full of the favor of God. Here is a brief summary….
Due to our stand-by status, we were unable to get on our first flight out of Omaha…. and the second flight only had one open seat. If we did not get on the second flight, we would miss our 2 other flights and face problems with our pre-paid hotel arrangements. Jean was full of faith…. I was not. But we prayed and believed for an extra seat to open…And it did!!!! Jean made friends with the Delta ticket agent and he hooked us up with 2 seats together in the front of the plane. This was a big help because we had less than an hour to catch our next international flight.
Catching the next flight ended up being no problem. We were also hugely blessed to both get seats in business class together (huge perk of flying stand-by! We love you Corrine!) The flight to France was only 8 hours and we enjoyed our roomy chairs and fellowship.
The Paris airport was a nightmare however. We only had 2 hours and the airport was very confusing. After getting our bags, we carried them half way across several sections only to be turned back again and again. We finally found our terminal and we checked in for our flight to Lisbon. We should have had big fines because we knew our bags were over the limit of 20 kilos, but the agent only charged us a small fee for our extra bag. Yeah!!!
When we arrived in Lisbon, we jumped in a taxi for our hotel. I was so excited to finally be able to speak Portuguese again…but when the taxi driver began to speak to us, I could not understand a thing he said!!! His Portuguese was so fast and proper, I barley understood a word. This was the beginning of a rude awakening for me…
I came to Portugal thinking I could speak reasonable Portuguese…. I knew my grammar was bad, but I still thought it was understandable…Needless to say; I am in the beginner’s class with Jean. We are blessed to have two other Iris missionaries who serve in Pemba here with us as well. So we are all together in our pursuit to speak/understand this beautiful language!
Please pray for us! Jean has a horrible sinus infection that keeps him from sleeping at night and overall zaps his strength. We are totally dependant on Jesus for his touch.
