Safely home, thank you, Lord.
A couple of corrections from the previous post which, obviously, was written in haste: The TAM flight that crashed last Tuesday killing all aboard and some on the ground had landed at a domestic airport in Sao Paulo. My flight, Delta 105, landed at the international airport a few miles away. Indeed, our connecting flight to Campo Grande was on a Fokker 100 both ways, not an Airbus as I originally thought. The Minister of Defense (whose responsibility it is to oversee commercial aviation) was sacked in the middle of the week for failure to address the inherent dangers in having a full airport in the middle of a residential area as Congonhas is. I hope that those issues will be addressed quickly for the sake of all air travelers in Brazil.
Our return was a tension of late flights and a missed connection. Following the fatal accident, the domestic airport was closed during rains, while flights were being canceled and diverted and a few instances of pilot refusal to land at the domestic airport while rain was falling. Add to the mix that there are no strong competing airlines for domestic Brazilian air traffic and you get delay, delays and more delays. We were not even close to making our 10:55 pm flight to Atlanta on Tuesday night; we had to stay an entire day. Our return flight was completely uneventful, however, and we were happy to hit the ground at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport at 8:10 or so yesterday morning.
My purpose for this trip was to assist a friend of mine, Todd Wright, who was doing a leadership conference at the FBC in Campo Grande, which is about an hour and 40 minutes northwest of Sao Paulo (by air; we don’t want to talk about the bus trip that others had to take), as well as for me to learn more about the cell groups that are a vital part of the church’s ministry. Todd and I were hosted wonderfully (pampered would be a more accurate term) in the home of youthful and energetic Senior Pastor, Gilson Breder, his beautiful wife, Vasti, and his gifted 23 year old son, Yuri. They live on the 15th floor of a downtown condo providing an astounding view of the city, especially at night.
It did not take me long to find out two things about Brazilians: they have great personalities with humor that is much like ours and that they like to eat meat-heavy meals late at night. We never even made an effort to eat the evening meal before 10:00 pm and usually it was around 11:00 pm. We left one restaurant at 11:45 and passed several open air eateries that were still packed with customers. And speaking of meat…
If you are a carnivore, you probably ought to try Brazil at least once. On multiple visits to a style of restaurant that we affectionately called a “bar-b-que” it went something like this: Warm greeting, seating at an appropriate table, order a drink (always, always, Guarana Antartica–anything else would be a sin), a plate(s) of steamed rice, a plate(s) of yucca, a plate(s) of fried bananas and then the meat. Long skewers of prime rib, filet mignon, pork ribs, sausage, chicken, other pork, cupine (sp? anyway the Brahma bull hump) and a few more. Servers just return to the table over and over until you finally put up the stop sign. It was about the equivalent of $12 plus drink. All the meat is cooked over open flame, salted pretty heavily, but, oh, so good.
I was quite surprised upon arrival to find that the Pan American Games were taking place in Rio de Janeiro at the same time. Americans, by and large, don’t even know what those are, much less pay attention to who is participating (it’s like the Olympics of the Americas, instead of the entire world). While Brazilians were watching in restaurants and bars, ESPN.com did not even have a link to the results or the medal count which America is leading with Brazil a strong, but distant, second.
Soccer, or futbol as it is known in the rest of the world, is the national sport. Most men play 2-3 nights a week at indoor or outdoor fields, though the average person has no access to the large world cup size fields and is not really prepared to play on fields that size. The indoor game is like arena footall–fast and exciting. I was drafted to play goalie for 4 or 5 games lasting ten minutes each. I was shown for what I am: an old, slow, white guy who had never played soccer before. Or, at least, not since elementary school. It would not have been so bad if the same 13 year old had not scored on me 5 times, turning around each time to mutter, “Sorry.”  We played so long that we were late to the evening session of the conference; Pastor Gilson just laughed and nobody else seemed to notice.
Next Up: The spiritual side of Campo Grande
