Our family left Friday afternoon from Rochester airport to fly to Brazil. It was a L-O-N-G trip. Our Rochester flight was at 5:27 PM. We flew to Newark and had a three hour layover, followed by a nine or ten hour flight to Sao Paulo. So we landed in Sao Paulo Saturday morning, had a three hour layover and flew to Rio de Janerio, and we had to wait six hours there. Finally, our last flight landed us around 10 PM on Saturday in Florianopolis.

Cal & Carol Clark grew up in our church and have been missionaries in Brazil for a long time (it must be over 20 years). He is now overseeing all missionaries in Brazil for his agency (ABWE). Every three years they gather all the ABWE missionaries in Brazil for a conference. The conference begins tonight (Sunday), and Cal asked me to be the evening speaker. So I will be speaking each night to the missionaries and the girls will be doing childcare and lessons with the children of the missionaries.
We will be praying for you today at Northridge and we will look forward to watching the service online this week. I want to thank the mission committee for making it possible for our entire family to participate in the Clark's ministry here in Brazil. He asked me quite a while ago to speak, but a few months ago wondered if the girls could participate as well. We are so thankful that we get to experience this together. Most mission trips that I've been on, I simply come home and tell the girls about the trip. I am so thankful that they get to participate in this one with me!
On another topic... if you receive this notification before you drive to church - notice that the work has begun on the parking. When we left on Friday, they were clearing trees in the property behind the zoo parking lot!
Here are a couple of photos:

In Sao Paulo... now two more flights and 12 more hours to go.
Three primary activities took up our time on the three layovers:

1. Competition... Morgan pulled out her old "heel-eezz" (not sure of correct spelling) from years ago (they have a wheel under the heel). And they all took turns wearing them and created a timed competition in a quiet section of the Sao Paulo airport.

2. Sleep... We all managed to sleep a bit in terminals in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janerio
3. Read... We all got reading in too
Thanks for your prayers over the six days of the conference.