What A Move!

Last week we made our move to our final city: Arapiraca, Alagoas, Brazil.  This might sound a little like a complaint fest (and maybe it is to some degree), but I really want to show how differently (aka how slowly) things work down here.  I'll try to just hit some of the highlights :)
The movers finished packing up our apartment Monday, March 3.  There were two men from the company who came in the morning, and they brought back two more men they hired off the street after lunch to help load things onto the truck.  Well, this extra 'help' led to some things being loaded that weren't supposed to (for example, my clothes for the week!).  But overall, we were very impressed with their speed and efficiency.
They left that afternoon and said it would be a 2.5 day trip so they should get there on Saturday.  Now, is it me or does Tuesday plus 2.5 days not equal Saturday?  Nevertheless, they said they would arrive by Saturday.
Without any furniture or belongings, we went to Brasilia to stay in the mission's guest house Tuesday night-Thursday morning, until our flight at noon on Thursday.  We flew into the state of Sergipe and stayed with our supervisors that evening before making the 3 hour drive to Arapiraca on Friday.  The plan was to stay in a hotel one or two nights until our house was somewhat set up...
Long story short, we called and called and couldn't get a hold of the movers and they finally showed up on Sunday in the late afternoon with busted boxes and a few broken and dinged up items.
After three trips to the store to try and sign up for internet, we found out they couldn't provide service at our house because our street name wasn't in their system.  They service our neighborhood, but since the street was recently named (it's a dirt road), it wasn't in their computer and they couldn't send anyone out...
It also took three trips to the cell phone store to get a new plan/numbers.  We got Nick's set up on the second visit, but they couldn't figure out how to sign up Amber's phone for a plan that was listed in their catalog (but they just couldn't find how to select that option on the computer...)
We were anxious to unpack all of our boxes and get settled in our house, however our house (which we love) was pretty bare bones, meaning there were no cabinets or drawers in the kitchens and bathrooms, and no closets in the bedrooms.  So we had to go out on Monday and buy furniture before we could start unpacking.  Well, we found our kitchen and bedroom items at a store that was able to deliver them by the end of the week, but our bathrooms and hallway storage we had to order online and will have to wait a few weeks to get.
It is hot, hot, hot here and there are no fans or a.c.'s so we are pretty sweaty ALL the time!  We want to leave the windows open, but that leads me to another problem - the mosquitoes! They are everywhere.  We are so ate up we all look like we have the chicken pox right now (especially poor Carter).  You should see Nick and I trying to kill all of them in Carter's room at night before we shut the door - I'm sure it's a pretty comical song and dance.  We're just praying for some relief soon and that none of them are disease carriers (especially dengue, which is so prevalent here).
Our water ran out yesterday, and we are on day 2 of no showers, cleaning dishes, washing hands, flushing toilets, etc. So, that's fun.
The biggest thing is just that it takes so much longer to accomplish one task here, i.e. you have to go to three stores to get all the groceries you need, you have to go back to the same store multiple times to get one task accomplished, you never know when a shop is going to be open or closed to help you with whatever you need.
But we are here, and we are healthy, and we are (mostly) happy.  We are excited to get completely settled in and begin our work which we are confident the Lord has called us to do.  Thank you for your prayers, words of encouragement, and support.  Hopefully my next post will read something like, "We've figured it all out and we are super settled in our new home :)"