Saturday, October 18th, 2008

One of the things I love about staying at a hotel is to be able to use the fitness equipment. You don’t have to drive anywhere, and many times it’s better than what I normally use…many times it’s not but we won’t go there right now… I think I might have inherited this preference from my dad, but I like to get up early and exercise first thing in the morning. Since we weren’t at the same hotel, we weren’t able to do this together, but I performed my little exercise ritual at 6AM while everyone was still soundly sleeping. What a way to start the day!

Walked in the sunshine over to La Quinta to catch a ride with dad to Capps, the rental place. I always like riding with dad. We have good conversations usually, especially in the morning when he’s at his best. :P When we finished loading the van, which smelled faintly of carpet cleaner, with the luggage and newly-bought Walmart loot …, we hit the road towards Monterrey. After the obligatory Starbucks of course!!

Dad led devotions as we drove, all about the Kingdom of Heaven. How does the Kingdom of Heaven differ from the one here on earth? Good questions to ponder as we prepared to bring the good news of the Kingdom to Mexico. I smiled as we prayed…wondering if the trip across the border would be as eventful as our flying experiences the day before.

We stopped at the border…and just in time too! Jamie had made the announcement “Okay, everyone! Drink your water, we are a half-hour away!” Unfortunately, we didn’t get the memo that the last 10 minutes of driving were over very lurching roads! As we girls encouraged dad to drive for all he was worth, I couldn’t help but think about poor Joby … he had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to travel with the Conzattis!

I guess they passed a new law in January of this year. You can only use the visas for one entry, and you MUST turn them in when you cross back over into the United States. Rats! No more saving money by getting two trips out of one visa! It also took considerably longer to process and pay for all of our visas, but fortunately we were first in line. We never know for sure either if the bank is going to be open or closed. Today it was closed. No worries though! I got to practice some translating work with our visa person, which was really fun!

Jamie read Patrick Mc Manus to us as we drove. Fun times! We arrived in Monterrey with still enough light to navigate us to Costco for some last needed supplies for the week. Dinner was deferred in favor of reaching our destination…let’s get to Hualahuises!!! “Barn door” instinct was kicking in by this point I think.

We arrived to hugs and rejoicing. The DeHoyos couldn’t believe how well Leslie looked. In fact, she is so much back to normal that we almost forget that she just came out of brain surgery on Monday! We circled around, thanking God for our safe trip and for all the things he is going to accomplish during our time here.