This is a email that Jo Anna recently wrote to a friend in one of our supporting churches.  With her permission I am reposting a slightly redacted version.  If you want more posts like this, leave a comment to encourage her.

Howdy S.!  Yep, finally me getting back to you.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this letter the last couple of days knowing that I really needed to get back to you.  Felicia started school last week again and we’ve been adjusting to a new schedule as a family.  She really likes going to her school.  I think I’m getting ahead of myself here.  Maybe I should just go down the list and answer your questions.  Huh? 

How are things going?

Generally speaking, things are going well.  We are very pleased to finally be in Durazno.  Digging into our stash of stuff for VBT and other ministries has been very enjoyable.  Yeah! We get to put some of the things that we’ve carted around to good use.  For example, I used visuals and flannel graph that I got from M. and N. for our wedding for the VBT that we helped with in Paysandú. (Thank you ladies!) I’m also using materials that they gave me to teach S.S. lessons to Felicia and our little neighbor boy.

It’s fun and rewarding to meet the people that we and others have been praying for, for a long time.  The day we moved from the capital, I got all emotional at one point because we had been praying for that day to come for about five years and it finally came. Now we are here and have the joy of seeing how God has prepared the hearts of those He is putting in our path. We are curious to see how God is going to work through certain situations with some of the people with which we are presently working.

How is everyone adapting?

As far as adapting goes, I must say that it took me about 4-6 months to get back into the groove of things down here.  I had been gone (except for short term trips) for about twelve years. A lot can change in that time (some good, some not so good), a lot of new faces in churches, people who used to be faithful in church no longer in the picture, foods and items available that we could not get before (ie. blueberry products-thanks to President Bush’s visit to Uruguay a few years back), crime rate greatly increased, poverty more noticeable, technology more advanced, no smoking in public places (tremendous improvement in government buildings), sayings dropped and new ones added, the list could go on . . .

Personally, I have truly enjoyed living in Uruguay again minus the increase in crime, poverty, and trash. The first two months in the country were rather hard because I knew the language and Paul did not yet.  Can you imagine all of a sudden having to do the dealings with all aspects of your families’ life?  I found it to be very hard to be the one who had to make the phone calls to set up looking at houses, umpteen trips to government offices for the residency process, getting house insurance, setting up the phone & high speed internet, electrical, water, shopping for appliances plus translating everything back to your husband so he could help make the decisions? It was as if we had a major switch in roles overnight!  Thankfully, I wasn’t responsible to make all those decisions.  Paul found it rather frustrating, due to the circumstances of language and culture, to have his hands tied so to speak and to not be able to help me more with the whole process. He could tell that it was putting a lot of strain on me, but yet, there was not much he could do about it.  We can’t imagine what it is like for missionaries who find themselves in the same situation with no one in the family having the ability to communicate fluently. Wow! An entire family having to depend on the graciousness of someone else to explain everything and walk you through stuff . . . not easy. What a joy it was for me to see my husband be able to handle most of these moving changes on his own when we moved to Durazno! This accomplishment was very rewarding for him as well after spending so much time in language training.

For the first six months, Sundays were especially hard for our family.

Here’s why:

*We missed our home church and the fellowship we had there.

*Paul and Felicia could understand very little of what they were hearing (which naturally results in great difficulty to remain engaged in the service).

*I was enjoying seeing old friends and wanting to stay after services and chat while my husband and daughter were on extreme overload due to caring believers who were constantly bombarding them with questions that they either couldn’t understand or adequately reply to.

*Waiting for the right public bus combination for up to 40 minutes at times while keeping an eye open for pick-pocketers after services just added to the stress.

*So . . . Felicia would be bouncing off the wall, Paul would come home, eat, and go to bed with a terrible headache, and I would, well, try to understand and remember that my husband and daughter were going through a whole lot more adjustment than I needed to go through.  I simply needed to give them time to “catch up”.

After being in country for about six months, we found that Felicia was still having trouble integrating so we decided to send her to a private bi-lingual pre-school two times a week.  This proved to be one of the best things we could have done for her.  Her language ability improved drastically and she now had other children to play with. God blessed us with a teacher who is a born again believer howbeit not from the same circles.  This provided a soft transition for our little one.

Our move to the interior of the country of course brought some changes to our daily routine.  We quickly learned that, unlike the capital, all stores close from about 12:30 to 2:30 pm. every day and that even the grocery stores close as early as 8:30 pm.    One day, while we were still unpacking from the move, we were just going to make some cold cut sandwiches for lunch and ended up have to order our meal from a restaurant because nothing else was open!

In this city more so than any other place we’ve lived, believe it or not, we feel like we cannot get away from the worldly atmosphere that surrounds us.  Every week since we moved we have been bombarded with the sounds of carnival (Marti Gra) rehearsals (african drum rhythms, dancing, people whistling, etc.) They come by our house at about 11:00 at night. It has gotten better now that the season is almost over, but it got to be nearly every night for several weeks.  Poor Felicia would run through the house closing all the windows saying that she could not sleep because the drums scared her.  We would turn a fan on and put music on in her room to drown out the sounds.  The night of the big parade there were food stands on our street and partying going on till about 4 am.  The next morning I had to scrub down our front gate entrance because at least three drunks decided to use it as their bathroom. I’ve lived in many places, but I’ve never had to deal with that! Paul stayed up till about 3:30 am just for security reasons.  We rented a couple movies earlier in the day and tried to keep as low a profile as possible. We are truly grateful for God’s protection! Our neighbor thought we were out of our minds when we told her we were going to stay home and watch a movie. After all, all the fun was basically at our doorstep!

All three of us love looking at the stars at night (because we can actually see them here–not so many lights).  Felicia has already learned the names of some constellations (Orion). Hearing the birds in the morning and looking out my kitchen window at our fruit trees and flowers is a delight to my soul! No lettuce or spinach this year though, some sort of bug decided that they were too good to pass up!

That’s all for now . . . send you more tomorrow.  OK?  It’s after midnight and time to get some shut-eye.  Thanks for your prayers and faithfulness up North!  Have a great day at work.

In Christ,

Jo Anna

I Pet. 4:10,11

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