Man Down, 1/2 a Woman Down But Hey - All the Luggage Made it.

Do you realize that Recife Brazil is closer to Africa than it is to the United States?  That dawned on me about hour 9 of the trip.  The whole toilet flushing the opposite way when you are below the equator - well, sad to tell you, it's a myth.  But I'll update from the beginning.  We lost one at the airport, not a bag, a person.  We had a last minute passport problem and one of the veteran's, Cruz Shope, wasn't able to come. You want to talk about an emotional scene, two parents walking through security without the son they thought was coming with them.  This was definitely one of those moments that we were all scratching our heads asking, "really God, you aren't going to work this one out the way we want?"  Who are we to know, for that matter, we are we to even ask?  While the Visa Fiasco 2011 was going down,  LuggageGate had begun.  Seems that part of our group got in line with an American Airlines Agent that was none too happy about our trip to Brazil.  She became militant about the size dimensions of the luggage we were bringing with us. Mind you, we had over 20 pieces of luggage, each filled to 69.5 lbs of clothing for the children in the favella's.  This is the exact same luggage that has been used for countless mission trips to Brazil, the exact same luggage that an agent two stalls down whisked through without a second thought.  Her solution?  For our team to pay $4,000 dollars in extra baggage fees because the luggage was too long.  Seriously, I didn't even know luggage could be too long.  But evidently they teach you those things at luggage school.  It became clear to us that no one in our group was going to sway her yardstick.  So what did we do?  We asked for rolls and rolls and rolls of packing tape from her. We then proceeded to dog pile the luggage compressing it just enough to reach the size limit and then holding it  together with half a roll of packing tape around each piece. This is where the 1/2 Woman Down part comes in.  Seems one of our team members lower back was only rated for 65 lbs and she was hefting 69.5 lbs.  Despite an incredible amount of pain, she is soldiering on.  So before we even pushed the gate, we'd leg wrestled a gate agent and lost.  One of our experienced travelers was on his way home with his grandparents and a young healthy member of our team had been reduced to an Advil/Tylenol junkie.    OK God, where are you headed with all this?   Our plane ride was uneventful.  Every piece of luggage made it.  Our time in the favella was incredible, humbling and terribly heartwrenching all at the same time.  We met a little boy, maybe 10 or 11 years old, that had just been returned to the favella's after being kidnapped and abused by a taxi driver for two months.  Unbelievable.  He's just a boy.  This will be an adventure.  It already has been.  - Ken