Translate

Saturday, August 24, 2013

We made it to Banos del Inca!

     After 9 months of planning, we finally made it to Peru! Saying goodbye to our friends and family in Santa Cruz and Tuolumne County was probably one of the hardest parts of all of this.  However, we know it is not "good-bye" forever; it is just "see you later". When we arrived to Lima, we were expecting to be met by Mesod, a friend who would help us with all our paperwork. We were overjoyed when all of the Petriks surprised us at the airport at 1am!!!
     We had many unexpected bumps in the road from Sacramento to Lima. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until we arrived in Houston, Texas for our layover.  We were on the plane ready to taxi to the runway and here comes a couple of United employees all dressed in tarmac gear coming right towards us. There was a problem with our dogs paperwork (nothing we did incorrectly) but rather a problem originating in Sacramento with the way they input our information.  They gave us the sad news that the dogs would not be able to fly with us and have to be boarded at the airport until the next day. They couldn't even assure us that the dogs would be able to make it on the flight the next day.  It was very upsetting. We were confused and frustrated because we had done so much work to assure everything would go smoothly. We even went to Sacramento 3 days before our flight to do the dogs paperwork as they had requested. With tears in our eyes our plane began to taxi to the runway. We said a prayer and asked God to intervene and feverishly sent off some emails to ask for prayer. Suddenly, we stopped and the captain said there was going to be a short delay before take-off due to an operational problem. Next thing we knew they said we were going to have to return to the hangar. Our hopes suddenly rising, could this delay be from God for us!!! We got back into the airport and our plane ended up being delayed for another hour and a half as they fixed an air conditioning unit.  Needless to say, this was enough time for the United Pet Safe people to fix the problem and have our dogs loaded onto our plane.  We cried a little and were amazed how God cares about every part of our lives, even our pets. He reaffirmed to us through this that He would be there with us every step of this journey. 
     While in Lima, God showed us His sovereignty in all situations. The process to have the dogs released to us was not easy. It took over 6 hours, but this nice employee at the cargo facility took favor on us and stayed with us all 6 hours and walked us through every confusing step. We knew this was also a provision from God. Then when it was time to leave and go to Banos del Inca the air traffic controllers went on strike in Lima.  They were cancelling flights left and right. But God was ready for us to start our life in Banos and our flight was one of the flights that made it out that day!!!! (Thank you Grandma and Papa for surprising us with plane tickets, so we didn't have to take the 14 hour bus ride!)
     As we are getting settled here in our new home we have no doubt that this is where God wants our family.  If there was any doubts before we left the United States, God reconfirmed to us over and over the last 2 weeks that we are following the path that He has set before us.  Thank you all for keeping us in your prayers. We will keep you all updated with the happenings here in Banos!
Love- The Brower family
 Don was considering the cuy (guinea pig) for lunch, but then decided there wasn't enough meat LOL!
 Our 1st prop plane ride!! This was the plane we took from Lima to Cajamarca.
                                                        Our first family dinner in Peru!
Caleb, Hannah, Eva, and our new neighbor, Melina. They got to watch the cows in the field be milked.