Chapter Three

I'll try to write some more now, but I'm so awfully tired! Not only did we lack sleep from the night before, but last night we stayed up way too late and got up too early. I just woke up from my siesta, thanks to super-excited kids who barely slept for theirs!

But back to Thursday night ... when we were in Brazil, we couldn't get ahold of Karen and Oscar to tell them that we were indeed able to continue on to Asuncion and that they needed to meet us at the airport at 11:30PM! The folks at the Sao Paulo airport must have an internal contract that involves their staff to confuse foreign passengers as much as possible, and whenever possible, they should also send those passengers on wild goose chases for simple things. Last night our "simple thing" was just to make a phone call to Karen to tell her the change of plans. We couldn't use the pay phones because you needed a certain phone card to use them. We were told to go to Gate 6 to get the proper card for the phones. They told Fred that he needed his passport at the little shop down the hall in order to purchase one. The little shop didn't have the card that fit into the phone so they sent us back to our original gate and said, "When you get to Asuncion, you call and tell them to come to the airport." By that point, everyone was loading the plane and we had to just board along with them.

The whole way there, I just kept praying that somehow Oscar would have gotten through to the airlines and found out that we were on that flight. What in the world would I do if we landed in Asuncion, gathered all that luggage and then had to sit and wait until who knows when because we didn't have the right phone card in Paraguay or something?! So I just prayed to the God who had provided continually for us up to that point!

When we got off the plane, Nancy saw Karen through a far door waving and waving to us, so we knew our prayer had been answered! Oscar had called the airline to see if we were on that last flight and they wouldn't tell him, for privacy reasons, if we were on it or not. If you know Oscar, you know that he has a way with words and eventaully convinced them that they could easily tell him if the Weinhardts were on that flight and they finally told him, yes!