Natal, Brazil 2007: Goodbye Gambas...

By the time I finished doing my morning activities on Friday, it was cloudy outside. I was not surprised seeing that lately my plans seemed to fall apart left and right. I had no idea what the schedule for the weekend was and I just hoped the weather would be good enough for me to be able to sit in the sun for a little while. I spent the morning reading in my room. William had overslept, something I knew would happen, and didn't wind up going to the Planalto with his father. I needed to get there that afternoon in order to pick up my order from the co-op and keep my promise to play baseball with Filipe and Junior.

Aunt Lori spent most of the morning on the phone trying to get things settled in Victoria, another one of the Brazilian cities she does a lot of work in. She had succeeded in her plans for the morning, and by the time lunch rolled around, I was surprised that Uncle Mark was nowhere to be found. He had decided to stay with the guys for his last lunch in the Planalto. This left the four of us to partake in some sort of fish stew, which wound up being the best lunch I had eaten here yet. Aunt Lori decided to use the lunch circumstance to call a family meeting of sorts. Caroline was anxious to get the meeting started and kept saying "can we start" as her mother was serving us our meal.

It was beginning to get annoying, and finally William spoke up. This was something I had been waiting for him to do since Caroline started asking her repetitious question. In response, he mumbled just so I was barley able to hear him. The line was classic William. "Shees Caroline, it's not like we are electing a president here." His mother didn't hear him, and she was probably wondering why I was laughing so hard at the table. The meeting finally commenced. We decided we were going to pack most of the belongings that day, and then take the next day to go to Pipa in buggys. I hadn't been south of Natal yet, so the idea intrigued me.

After lunch and the meeting was over we began getting our things in order. After about an hour and a half, William and I had most of our room packed up and ready to go. We had also loaded the car with things to bring to the hall and to bring to Inacia's house. I began getting anxious, because it was almost 4:00 and we still hadn't left. In a place where the sun sets at 5:20, you don't want to be getting to the Planalto at 5:00 and keep your promise to a couple 13 year-olds for a measly 20 minutes. Finally, with no room in the car to move, we were heading to the high plain of Natal. I got there and was shocked to see a such large number of people working on the hall. There are usually helpers, but I don't think I had ever seen that many people there at one time, other than meeting of course.

Some were scrubbing tiles, others were painting doors and trim inside the auditorium, Uncle Mark was making door frames, and Luciano was pushing people in the right direction. He had finished painting the auditorium the previous day, and it looked awesome. The granite counters had been installed that morning and they looked very good and really gave the kitchen a "complete" look. I talked with Neto for a few minutes, and collected my co-op order from Samara, and then it was outside to play baseball with the two boys.

William kept riding his bike back and forth while I played catch with Junior and Filipe. Both boys had progressed since the beginning of the summer, but I was most impressed with Filipe's ability to throw a fast accurate pitch. I ran them through a few fielding drills as the sun began to set. When dusk had fallen we called it quits for the day. By that time the afternoon session of school had let out for the day, and several other regular players were walking by the church. I asked them if they wanted pictures taken and they happily agreed. I took pictures of four of them, and gave them the photos to take home. Then we took a few group pictures. I was sad that this would be our last opportunity to play, and I could tell that the kids were too. I had arranged for Rodrigo to keep the equipment and to plan games with the kids here and there.

It was almost 8:00, by the time the kids all said goodbye. Junior and Filipe told me that they were going to come to Sunday school that weekend, which I thought was awesome. There would be time to say goodbye to them later. There was a large crew preparing the hall for an elder’s conference that weekend, and they finished around 8:30. Uncle Mark and I took one last look around the hall for the night before heading home. When we arrived back to Lobster Road I did a little bit more packing before getting ready for bed. All of us were pretty tired. It had been a long, somewhat stressful day.

Aunt Lori had gotten almost everything that she needed to get done finished that afternoon. We had achieved our goal of getting prepared to go home, so the plan to go to Pipa was put into action. The order of 1,000 Bibles would not be in until Monday, so Lori had put Liese in charge of handling that. Washington and Junior would be driving us to Pipa the next day and they were planning on picking us up at about 8:30. We had decided to take Inacia with us the next day, so she slept over the house that night so she was there well rested the next morning. She spent most of the evening helping Lori prepare to leave. William went to bed relatively early, and I was not too far behind. The guffaw of Uncle Mark was enough to keep me up though, so I went into the living room for a while to watch King of Queens with him. At about 11:00 I was in bed with the lights off, looking forward to another buggy ride the next day. This time however, it would be in a different direction...

Luciano Giving a Look of Intimidation