It has been a whirlwind week! We are blessed with an awesome fellowship of missionaries who are so incredibly helpful. For those of you who like to read the details, prescription here’s the breakdown of how our week went:
Friday: We arrived in Bogotá around 2:30. Miss Naomi, case John Michael and Miss Lisa (all missionaries) met us at the airport. We went to our new apartment and unloaded. Then we to Miss Naomi’s house to call the moms and sister. After that we went to a local mall and ate dinner. When we got back to the apartment it was somewhere around 9pm. We dug out pajamas and crashed.
Saturday: We woke up bright and early and headed over to Miss Naomi’s. She took Corey and I to a clinic to get blood tests for our I.D. card applications. Then we braved a Super Wal-Mart style store to stock up on groceries and household items. We returned to her house and started preparing food and cleaning up for the Bogotá missionaries to come over for dinner. We had a great dinner and Corey and I were initiated into the group by playing Guesstures! The men were quite happy to have Corey around as it was the first time they had won. Again we got home around 9pm and I think we were all dealing with quite a bit of sinus issues and little altitude sickness, discount so we crashed again.
Sunday: We got up and headed to church. We went to Patio Bonito, a church in a poor area of town. We sat in on the Children’s Church. It was amazing! There are five services every day and Naomi says they run between 800 and 1000 throughout the day. The service we were in started pretty normal, but as the minutes clicked by the kids kept pouring in until they were pretty much out of space to fit any more. Alex braved going into Sunday School after children’s church and enjoyed it. We grabbed lunch and went to visit another missionary family to pick up some paperwork for the government and the school. Then we headed home. Finally we had time to unpack!
Monday: We got Alex and Maggie up and ready to go to school. The registration process took three hours! They sat in their classes while Corey and I did all the paperwork and then came home with us. My training began on LACC. Naomi is teaching me how to do all the processes so that I can take over the LACC administration when she goes on furlough. We had our first dinner in our apartment – spaghetti.
Tuesday: A bit of a fiasco, the bus didn’t show up for Alex and Maggie, so we had to take them to school. We spent an hour or so ordering uniforms for them. Miss Naomi took Corey and I to the immigration office to apply for our I.D. cards. That also took a long time waiting our turn. We went to the bank trying to take out money, waited, couldn’t do it. Returned to Miss Naomi’s and back to training. Another fiasco with the bus, the kids got home really late.
Wednesday: The bus came on time, all was fixed. Back to the bank, still no luck. Another run around town trying to get a cell phone working and other errands run. I should explain here that much like Atlanta, there’s no quick run into town. Traffic is in abundance and it’s a good size city, so every trip takes at least 20 minutes. Most days we’ve left at 8 or 9 with a couple of things to do and by the time we finish it’s 4pm. We had a little time for LACC training. In the evening Corey and I decided to take the kids shopping for school supplies. We thought we had figured out pretty much how to get to the store. Wrong! We drove pretty far out of our way. Bogotá doesn’t believe in left-hand turns, so we had to drive a very long way to find a way to turn around. We made our way back to Miss Naomi’s house to get new directions. We found the store and stocked up on backpacks, lunchboxes and other necessities for school. When we finished it was after 8pm. Came home, crashed.
Thursday: Corey got a day of rest. I, Tona, went to a women’s Bible study with the other missionary wives. It’s an English Bible study. There were a lot of women there, some embassy wives, some oil executive’s wives, other missionaries and some Colombian women. It was a diverse and incredibly nice group of women. Afterwards Naomi and I went back to work on LACC projects, our first long time of focus on it.
Friday: It’s been a week! Back to the bank – this time successfully!! Back to the cell phone place – the battery they sold us was bad. Then we spent the day working on LACC things. We’re starting to find a routine and I think most of our running around is coming to an end.
Saturday: As I write this it’s Saturday. The kids are up getting ready for the day. One of the other missionaries, Miss Lisa, is taking the kids and I to a park this morning. It will be good for Alex and Maggie to have some fun time after a couple weeks of chaos. We haven’t seen Mike, Naomi’s husband, yet because he was in the jungle teaching Indians, but he’s back and I’m sure Corey’s schedule will fill up quickly. But today we will rest, play and have a day to unwind! Next week Naomi and I will be very busy traveling to quite a few LACC schools. So there it is in a nutshell – our first week in Bogotá, Colombia.
~Tona