Expectations...

I'm continually reminded of how much more grateful I am for something after it's almost been taken away from me. So often I go through life just assuming that everything will work just as planned. We drove through snow in Seattle on the way to the airport and I admired the beauty of the wintery wonderland, reveling in the fact that the hot South American sun awaited me. En route, Brant received a call from Delta saying our flight is delayed. When we get to the counter, the woman says it does not look good. We are going to miss our connecting flight. She wishes we would have gotten there earlier so they could re-route us through Atlanta instead of Detroit. The problem is that there is only one flight to Sao Paulo Brazil, and she's says with this delay we will miss it. She encourages us to go back home, but our brother-in-law Alan had already dropped us off and left. Then she said to stay the night in Seattle so that we don't have to spend 24 hours in Detroit. That doesn't sound good. 24 hours in Detroit in the middle of winter without even a coat. Missing an entire day of our packed full itinerary in Paraguay. Shoot. I ask her again to clarify the timing- our layover was scheduled to be 1 hour and 10 minutes. Our flight was delayed 1 hour and 15 minutes. I have hope though... I figure if our flight is delayed maybe our connecting flight could be delayed too? So we decide to continue as planned. I prayed and asked God to help us make our flight, and to help us have a good attitude even if we missed it. The gate attendant was so helpful and gave us a seat closer to the front. The stewardess was encouraging and said they may be able to take off a bit early and that they let the ground crew in Detroit know we were coming. The captain made good time. And we made it. Barely. As it turned out, a one hour and 15 minute delay turned into a one hour delay, with a one-hour and 10 minute layover which didn't leave us much time to catch the plane. In fact, it left us breathlessly running through the airport weaving in and out of people and yelling “we're coming! Hold the plane!” as we arrived at the gate. They looked at us with a smile and said “you must be the Barons... relax, you've made it!” Praise the Lord!

And just like that, my whole perspective changed. Instead of dreading an 11 hour flight, I was so thankful to be on it I could hardly contain myself! The discomfort of sleeping upright, cramped seating, the movie not working right, the guy behind me punching his screen at my back instead of pressing it, my back freezing up in pain... none of that bothered me at all now. I was grateful, not because any of my circumstances changed, but because my perspective changed in light of what we had gone through to get there.

I was reminded of the importance of letting go of expectations, and changing your perspective when you go to another culture. Like, for example, the expectation that your bags will arrive when you do. We made the connecting flight, our bags did not. It gave us an opportunity to be extremely grateful for the generosity of our friends to loan us what we needed until our bags arrived 4 days later. Or the expectation that you will get to take home all the fish that you catch on a fishing trip. We eventually “found” one of the 3 “lost” fish, walking away from the hotel shaking our heads and wondering about the integrity of our captains who had been so wonderful up to that point. But those were just little things. Not really any big deal at all in the grand scheme of things. We had been to Paraguay before, so we had an idea of what to expect. But the best thing we could do was to let go of expectations and try to just enjoy the experience from the perspective of gratefulness for the opportunity to be here. And so far, it has been such an amazing opportunity.

Judah wasn't able to go on the fishing trip with us, which made Brant and I the unofficial translators of the group. Our Paraguayan driver AnGell did great at explaining things slowly for us and we had several great laughs along the way. At one point it was quite hilarious trying to figure out what to eat at a restaurant (I was trying to avoid things like tongue...), but all in all it was good for us to be stretched in our Spanish, and to realize again that we have a lot more yet to learn! Just ask us to tell you the story about Dona's peanuts in the van... we had some good laughs with great camaraderie. Spending a long car ride with Jack and Dona Eggar and Alex and Susan Snyder gave us a wonderful opportunity to ask questions and learn from the wisdom and experience of our wise friends.

The actual fishing part of the trip wasn't particularly exciting for Brant and I... we didn't catch anything. Several times I thought I had a bite... and I did- several bites from piranhas tearing my bait to shreds without actually grabbing the hook. But Susan showed us how it is done and caught 3 dorado (the yellow fish kind of like salmon), and Alex and Jack also caught a few piranha and boga (like a catfish).

At the hotel we ate fried alligator as an appetizer and Piranha soup for dinner, which was quite tasty. They had a lot of animals on display, including a few adorable monkeys, small emu type things, turtles, macaws, coatis, and a capybara- the largest rodents in the world. I just love taking pictures of these exotic animals and am amazed at God's creation just looking at them!

The adorable and friendly coati

The capybara - largest rodent in the world.

Brant and the emu- Alex called them "furry pterodactyls" because they looked like they wanted to eat us. 

Enjoying our piranha soup

They served us this appetizer and after we had all eaten a bit, told us it was alligator! 

The huge Parana River

The dock at our hotel

One of Susan's Dorados

One of Alex's piranhas

The electricity went out at the hotel during a magnificent thunder and lightning storm.  We stood outside by the pool to watch the lightning flash.  We just don't get storms like this in Washington!