Internet Woes

Hello, Everybody!

You were probably wondering what happened to us! Well, basically, we arrived here at the beach Tuesday night after spending one day in Miami Beach with an old friend. We left her house at about 8:00 am, a little too early for our flight at noon, but we did not want to take chances with the airport traffic, which can be horrendous. Actually, we had no problem. We flew back to Houston and from Houston here. The plane from Houston was almost empty, so we were able to stretch and sleep most of the way. They picked us up in our own SUV (yeah!), AND it had passed the DMV check. One small problem: the air conditioning doesn´t work now. We are working on that... We arrived safely home and went straight to bed.

Tuesday morning we got up to set up the place and to unpack. Well, we found out that we did not have Internet connection, no phone land line, and our local cellular did not work either. We were completely isolated.The cable guy came Thursday and said that our modem was not working. Back home we would have gone to Fry´s, bought a modem and plugged it in ourselves, but not here! We had to go to a nearby town, pay for the modem, and schedule another appointment for the cable guy who would bring the modem. He came the next day; however, he happened to come at the time when the power had gone out and was not allowed to enter the compound by Security. We waited all day. When we finally called late afternoon to see if he was coming, they told us that he had been turned away at the gate. The appointment was rescheduled for Saturday, but they couldn´t even tell me morning or afternoon. I called the front gate and told them to let the cable guy in no matter what, which they did. He finally came after lunch, and he brought another guy with him, Also the guy from maintenance had left word to be notified when the cable guy came because it was he who said it was a cable problem. All three guys came in and worked on plugging the modem for a while. Finally, they got it to work, and here I am writing this.

It always takes us about a week to get things going. The land line was fixed by the maintenance guy on Wednesday. In the afternoon we went to town to get groceries, try to charge our A/C and buy more minutes for our phone. Last time when we had a wayward muffler, we found a nice mechanic in a little town nearby. We went there first, but he doesn´t do A/C; however, he knew a guy. He called the guy, who agreed to take a look. We are so proud of ourselves because we actually went straight to his house following the local mechanic´s directions. Remember, there are no street names and no house numbers in this country. The A/C guy determined that the main A/C switch is bad. He kept it to try to find a replacement. We gave him our cellular number, and he agreed to call us back.

We left the A/C guy and went to the local pharmacy to buy $20 worth of minutes. We were told that it would take a few minutes, so we went shopping, but kept trying the phone and nothing happened. With the car full of groceries, we went back to the pharmacy. They told us that we must had a problem with the phone, so we had to go to the phone company's office, a half and hour down the road. We found it, but  had to wait a few minutes (I was worried about my yogurt and meat).We found out that since our phone had been inactive for two months, the SIM card was deactivated, our phone number given to somebody else, and we had to get a new SIM card, phone number, furthermore, our $20 in minutes were given to the person who now had our old phone number. Tough luck. We sped home to put our groceries away. We hope we don´t get food poisoning when we eat that meat. After we got home, we realized that the A/C guy had our old phone number. We had to call him to give him the right one.

I am sorry that you have to read this saga, but I am actually recording this for posterity, or for times when we can't sleep. We can always read this stuff and laugh or fall asleep, whatever! Well, on to ministry. Saturday night we went out with our oldest local friends who still don't know the Lord. They told us that some of the couples already know that we are here and are wondering when the first meeting will be, so it was decided that we will meet over the next three Saturdays, starting on the 20th, for movies and pizza. They paid for our dinner. It was very nice of them. Also, Saturday I got in touch with the Pastor to let him know we were here. He asked me to speak today at the second church. Monday is Mothers' Day here, and the second church had organized a special lunch. He wanted me to speak to the women. I agreed because I have some old talks that I gave at Iglesia Latina, and I always bring my little notebook with all talks and Bible studies just in case.

So today, Sunday, we went to our little church here first at 8:30 and the Pastor spoke, and then we went to the other church, crossing the river and through the woods, and I spoke to the women, but the men were listening (I told them they could). There were about 30 people gathering, without including children. After the service, lunch was served by the young people, the local chicken and rice. By the way, it is very, very hot and humid here in August. We are now back in our condo cooling off and resting. At least the condo's A/C works.

I am sorry this is long, but I had a whole week's worth of frustration to vent.

Until next time...from the beach...