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rio, days 1-3

June 5, I headed with 6 other folks from my church to Rio, for a mission trip working with kids in the Rio's favelas. I wrote a post on the overall experience for Sombra Road's blog, but I'll elaborate a little more here.

The road to Rio was fraught with obstacles. At the start of May, Brazil changed its visa-obtaining policies for US citizens, making the process take around three weeks. Unfortunately, we were unaware of these changes and had to hire an expediting service and get everyone we know praying that our visas would come in time. We were to leave Friday night, and Thursday afternoon around 4:30, we learned that we had, in fact, gotten our visas. They arrived in Atlanta on Friday morning. Once at the airport, we learned that our flight to Miami had been delayed long enough that we would miss our connecting flight. So another round of prayer began, that American could work it out with Delta so that the 7 of us could have the 7 remaining seats on Delta's direct to Rio flight that night. They worked it out. Mostly. Till we approached the ticket counter at 9:00 for our new 9:45 flight and Laura, Angie, and I had seats on the flight, but no tickets. More prayer and a trip to the Delta ticket counter: by 9:25 I had a seat and a ticket on the flight and boarding had begun!

Upon arriving Saturday morning, Jason, Kristin, and Jeremy, the missionaries we would be working with, met us at the airport and drove us to Jeremy's apartment, where we would spend the week. Jeremy's two-bedroom apartment, known as the Sombra Road House, where he lives with two young men whom the ministry disciples. And then came the seven of us. Never have I spent a week in such close quarters with 9 other people and had such an easy time of it.

They were kind enough to let us take naps, and then we headed out for some sight-seeing. We headed up to Corcovado- the Christ the Redeemer statue, atop the highest peak in Rio. It was a cloudy, windy day, and packed with tourists, but worth it for the amazing views of the city. (I can't get it to turn right side up.)That evening, we headed down to the beach at Ipanema to play around and get to know each other better.

We spent most of Sunday as tourists again. I recall being in the shower that morning and thinking I heard pigs squealing, grunting, and rooting around in the mud. But I thought to myself, No way- I am in the middle of a city. And then, as we walked to an ATM, there were the pigs on the side of the road. We headed to the Ipanema Hippie Fair and artist market and spent most of the afternoon there.

That evening, we went to Jason and Kristin's church. They worship at a Presbyterian church in a favela, where there is also a Compassion-sponsored daycare center. As we drove up into the favela, Kristin explained that it is standard practice to turn your headlights off and the lights inside the car on as you drive up, so that the armed guards (teenage boys with semi-automatic weapons) can see who is in the car. As we approached, this armed guard approached our car because we had apparently not turned the headlights off quickly enough. Somehow, this experience left me unaffected.

There were maybe 50 people there. Worshiping in a language you don't speak is an interesting experience. We sang a few songs in Portuguese that we sing at Intown in English, so that was helpful. During the sermon, the seven of us left the service to go outside and pray for the church. After the service, the church had a birthday party for everyone with June birthdays. This gave us an opportunity I really appreciated to spend more time with the people Kristin and Jason worship with.

More to come!

Labels: travel

posted by CP @ 3:24 PM 1 thoughts