Back in Minnesota

Having returned from the city excursion back on Tuesday we are now once again firmly ensconced in the land of Mosquitoes doing our best not to itch and fighting our hardest to keep them from carrying off our dog or anything else that pumps blood.

Thanks for your prayers for us over the last week. We have seen God accomplish some special things and we praise Him for what He is continuing to do. Many of you received our emails throughout the week so I won't go into a lot of details about the trip. (If you want to know some of the details, or if you are not on our email list and would like to be, send us a note at jonanddenielle@gmail.com.)

Here is a quick summary: praise God we had all of the documents we needed with us when we got to Chicago. Some of them had to be slightly altered but that only served to set us back one day. The first time we handed our paperwork to the officials at the consulate, they gave us back a small stack of stuff that was extra!

The remaining "set back" is that we can expect our visas to be returned after 40 days. This was a "set back" because we were hoping to be in Brazil before those 40 days are up. It was a surprise because the only information we received about a time frame was that the "official at the consulate will tell you how long it will take."

It was not a set back because we know that our times are in His hands and that God has a purpose remaining for us here while we wait. We look back with fondness at the experience: catching the train, ElliAnna's looks at the conductor when he punched our tickets, the boat ride that we thought would be faster but because we got behind a slow moving barge actually forced us to run again, the lady on a bike who was yelling at the man on the motorcycle behind her certain unmentionables (ok so that one wasn't so pleasant) and of course all the quick jogs through the city streets trying to beat the various deadlines.

Thanks again for praying and continue to pray that those visas will be approved (who knows, God sure doesn't operate according to our time frames). We are looking forward to spending a lot of time with the Rosetta Stone Portuguese in July, enjoying our family, and looking for new places to be involved in ministry while we wait.