Day 13 - Waxhaw

It was pouring rain as we were chauffeured to the Dallas – Fort Worth airport by a volunteer SIL driver at noon today, and it was with some relief that we settled down to wait for our boarding call. We had finally reached the end of an incredibly packed week and weekend. In fact, our last meetings were held just this morning. We hardly had time to check our e-mails before it was time to leave for the airport!

Despite the busyness, we did enjoy meeting with various people. And we even managed to get in a few visits with friends, but not all of them. So if I could do it over again, I’d budget more time for that. Who knows how many years will go by before we pass this way again?

We're also very thankful for the people who went out of their way to look after us and help us out with scheduling, transportation, accommodations, meals, and times of fun, food, and fellowship.  Some of these folks had never even met us before!  They were all a real blessing.

Guess what we saw in the Dallas - Fort Worth airport?  A Best Buy vending machine where you could purchase digital cameras, i-Pods, chargers, USB keys, and a host of other electronic devices!  I was fascinated.  I'd never seen one of these before!  Guess I'm more of a country bumpkin than I thought I was :)

Upon our arrival at Charlotte, North Carolina, I forgot to read the instructions concerning airport pickups. Not sure it would have helped anyway since our Canadian cell phone wasn’t working properly. When we didn’t call him like we were supposed to, the driver said that he tried to call us twice but couldn’t get through. So we ended up waiting in the pickup area until his wife came along carrying a JAARS sign. I don’t think they were too happy with us, but thankfully they were fairly gracious about it :/

When we got to the JAARS Center, we went to visit Kevin & Anita, recent colleagues from Burkina Faso who had invited us to have some supper at their place. At the end of a long day and in a new place, it’s sure nice to see familiar faces! Anita even went out of her way to get us some basic supplies so that we’d have something to eat over the next few days. The JAARS Center is far from any grocery stores and we don’t have a car here. We wanted to pay her for them, but she refused to tell us how much it cost.

For the rest of this week, we're staying in a cute little one-bedroom guesthouse apartment.  Sure glad we brought our coats along.  It's chilly here!

I have another presentation to give at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, so I’d better get busy on that.