The last two weeks

I have wanted to post about the happenings of the last few weeks but the last few days have been so insanely crazy that I have not had a chance.  

I'll start with the non-crazy, much-anticipated arrival of the volunteer team from Arkansas (Kecia and Mike Sandusky and 5 students from Southern Arkansas University) on May 13.  We were SO happy to see them when they got off the plane.  They had a wonderful trip over from the U.S., including a 12 hour lay-over in London, with lots of sight-seeing.  

The team did a variety of things while they were here (and did it all well!).  They led Bible studies, spoke to groups, went prayer-walking, shared Christ with folks they met on the street, prayed for people in their homes, sang, helped construct a building at an orphanage, played with kids, prepared food, washed dishes, visited the oncology ward at at local hospital and played with the kids there.   They were BUSY!   We were so proud of these 18-20 year olds! And Kecia and Mike were awesome leaders.

My time while they were here was spent keeping the home fires burning, transporting our children to and from school,  and cooking meals for everyone.  All of that was going well until last Tuesday when I did not look before I made a left turn, causing my vehicle to barely move (stress BARELY) into the path of an oncoming car. His door caught the bull-bar on the front of my car (we drive a 4 wheel drive vehicle similar to an SUV, called a Ford Everest).  Fortunately for me, having the bull bar protected my vehicle from being damaged at all, except for the bull- bar being bent outwards about 45 degrees.  Unfortunately for him the bull-bar punctured and scraped his door.  Fortunately for everyone, no one was injured.

Because of this I have learned many new Portuguese words!  And, as in all situations, you can find things to be thankful for - such as having a bull bar in the first place, which protected my car from being damaged, and for the fact that the man who hit me turned out to be a really nice person.  He did start out yelling at me (in English...something else to be thankful for!) that it was my fault.  When I took full responsibility for the accident he changed his tune and when we met up two days later at the insurance company to file the accident report he told me that his little boy went to school and told everyone that "an English lady hit my daddy's car and she's really nice!"

So here's my bent bull-bar:

And here is his punctured door:

There is much, much more craziness to tell you about...including about me running into ANOTHER vehicle (much more minor).......  But I'm out of time.  So tune in next time when you'll hear about an accident, an ambulance, a surgery and sick people!  (For those who may be worried, there were no near-death experiences and everyone is pretty much all fine now.)