The past couple days have been a rather stress-filled time for Joel and me, as we have been waiting for word on the status of our visas. We hit several additional snags along the way, but by last night everything seemed to be in order to have our contact in Chicago go into the Brazilian consulate and collect our visas this morning.

So our friend Roy at MCC Great Lakes did just that, going into the consulate this morning, with all the necessary documents and authorization in hand, only to discover that while my visa was ready, Joel’s was not. One more day was required to prepare his visa, which, with the holiday weekend, means it will not be available until Tuesday. No explanation for the delay was given, which just adds one more mystery to the whole process.

After some discussion, it was decided that all of us (myself, Joel, and Erika, the YAMEN! participant who is also going to be serving in Brazil) will wait until Thursday to fly out together. It does bring a measure of relief to finally have a departure date set (we actually already have our tickets for Thursday, so...), but I’m not letting myself get too excited until I see both of our visas in our hands! If all goes according to plan now, we will have spent roughly an extra 2 ½ weeks here in Akron after our week of orientation, which is apparently on the low end as far as delays for MCCers headed to Brazil!

One positive of our time here in Akron has been the wonderful dinner invitations! Just last night we had some delicious traditional Tanzanian food with another family playing the visa-waiting game.

All in all we’re holding together and are very excited to be nearing our departure for Brazil. I'll pass the word along as soon as our plans are locked in, but in the meantime your prayers would be appreciated as we try to work out these last details and get ready to go.

Today we were hoping to get through to the Brazilian Consulate in Chicago to check on the status of our visas, but we were unable to unfortunately. However, we believe our visas should be ready, so we're having someone who works with MCC in Chicago go into the consulate tomorrow to check things out. Ideally, he will be able to pick up Joel's and my visas and then overnight them to us, and we can be heading out of the country this weekend sometime. That is the ideal situation, one that I'm really pulling for! So please, if you think of it tomorrow morning around 9 or 10 Central Time, your prayers would be appreciated as our friend Roy heads into the consulate to get some answers!

On an unrelated matter, just thought I would pass along the mailing address that I will be able to receive mail at for my first 6 weeks in Brazil. During these 6 weeks I will be in Recife doing language study and getting a general introduction to Brazil, so the address I'll give here is the MCC Unit House in Recife where we'll be staying for some of the time:

Mike Spee
Mennonite Central Committee
Rua Antônio Paes de Andrade, 95
Prado - Recife - PE - 50751-050 Brazil

So if you feel like sending some snail mail, that would be where to send it. I'm not sure how long it will take for letters to get there, but it'll be interesting to find out!

Thanks again for your prayers and support, hopefully soon I will be able to post some extremely happy news! Stay tuned!

5:10! No, just kidding.

But seriously, last night Joel, Caley, Erika and I headed out to the track at Ephrata Middle School, a few miles from where we’re currently living.

We arrived to find a bunch of elementary and middle school-aged girls at drill team practice, but we weren’t about to let that deter us. We set about stretching and preparing both mentally and physically for the test of a lifetime. Ok, so maybe that’s a little dramatic, but it was still a big deal. The last time Joel and I remembered running a timed mile was 7th grade, and none of us had been running with any kind of regularity in the last few years. I know for me, the only running I’ve really done has been the sporadic game of soccer or ultimate frisbee.

So Erika set up with the video camera to capture the magic (stay tuned for that), and we grabbed our iPods, headbands, and stopwatches and set off on the race. I went out to the early lead, but I think I started a bit too fast. As I started fading in the 2nd lap, Joel passed me as we went into the 3rd lap. At that point I starting feeling my dinner a little bit; maybe we could’ve waiting a little longer or eaten a little less at the MCC picnic…

Joel led the remainder of the race, with Caley and me trying to keep up. As we came into the final straightaway I started my kick, trying to catch Joel, but alas, he was able to hold me off. Joel finished in a time of 7:04, and I came in just behind him at 7:07, with Caley not far behind us.

So, not exactly the time I was hoping for, I really wanted to beat my 7th grade time of 6:58, but it was not to be. Maybe sometime next week I’ll give it another shot… But yeah, we were glad that we did it, we had hyped it up so much we couldn’t really back out, so it was good to go out and just do it. We were all pretty wiped out after the race, but we did manage to take some fun pictures and give some post-race interviews.

3 men. 1 mile. Mission Accomplished!

The rest of the SALT, YAMEN!, and IVEP participants have now departed from Akron, headed to their respective destinations in the US, Canada, and across the globe. That has left four of us here in beautiful Akron: Joel, Erika, and I, who are headed to Brazil, and Caley, headed to Mexico. Joel and I are still waiting on our visas, with no definitive word on when those will arrive. The current estimate is that we will be here until the middle of next week, by which point our visas should have been issued at the Brazilian Consulate in Chicago, picked up by an MCC worker, and expedited out to us in Akron, after which we’ll be off to Recife in NE Brazil.

The past week of orientation has been a really incredible time, I must say. Who knew a group of people who had never met could become so close is so short a time? I think coming here with a common purpose allowed us to automatically move forward to the next level, if that makes sense, creating lasting friendships in no time. I feel like I have built some great friendships this past week, and I look forward to keeping in contact with people and up to date on what others are doing on assignment. It is kind of sad that we couldn’t spend more time together, but I guess that is not really the goal of this program. It is cool to know, though, that as we head out into our assignments, we are all going together, with similar fears and anxieties but also with a common purpose and a common faith that God goes with us.

Here are a few pictures from our work at/tour of the Material Resource Center, which I'll talk more about later.

During the week, Joel and I were able to spend a fair amount of time with Fabio and Alexandre, two IVEPers who are from Brazil. We also had the chance to meet Jean and Daryl, two MCC workers who have been in NE Brazil for the last year and just recently returned. We hope to get together with them for dinner sometime this week to talk more about Brazil and get a better idea of what things will be like there. Below is a picture of all of us at the commissioning service MCC held.

So what, you might be asking, will the few of us left behind be occupying ourselves with in the coming days? The following is a list of what we will most likely be doing:

1. Watching lots of the Olympics. And I mean lots, if yesterday is any indication…
2. Reading any Brazil books we can get our hands on from the MCC library.
3. Working at the Material Resource Center (MRC) of the MCC, where they prepare shipments of material goods for relief work around the world.
4. Running a mile.*
5. Learning Portuguese using the Rosetta Stone software that MCC has. I’m especially looking forward to this, it will be good to get a head start on the language.
6. Playing volleyball, ultimate frisbee, or other sports with the other MCC service workers.

*Ok, so #4 might need a little more explanation. Here’s the gist of it: so we were watching the Olympics (see #1) the other day and the women’s marathon was on. With nothing better to do, we watched it. Not the whole thing, that would be ridiculous, but a fair amount of it. At the end the announcer said that the winner ran each mile in an average, get this AVERAGE, of something like 5 minutes 10 seconds. We were blown away. This got us thinking, I wonder what we could run a mile in? None of us had run a timed mile since like 7th grade, so we don’t really have much to work with. This got me thinking: hey, why don’t we time ourselves in the mile sometime this week? We’ve got the time! This sounded like a fantastic idea to all of us, at least while sitting comfortably on couches watching other people run…

So today we did a little research and found a track at Ephrata Middle School, which just happens to be on the way to the MRC from where we’re staying, so we’re going to check it out tomorrow and then hopefully determine our mile times sometime in the next few days. Stay tuned for more information on this, we plan to document it well and proudly display the results of this little experiment.

I know everyone might be thinking this is a little odd… especially you other SALTers who are now in-country, overwhelmed and overjoyed at all the new experiences. But we are in Akron, and must fine ways to entertain ourselves! If you are reading this, though, and think, “wow, I haven’t run a timed mile in a long time either…”, we would love to have you join in our little experiment and share your expectations, results, and reactions with us as well! So break out your running shoes and stopwatch and find a local track or plot out a 1 mile course in your car or something, and see how you do!

On a more serious note, we know our time here in Akron will be well spent, but it is a bit frustrating not to be heading off to our assignments like the rest of the SALTers. There is still anxiety over the visa process, even though we know they are approved and it should just be a matter of time. The way this thing has played out I won’t be reassured until the document is in my hand, I’m afraid. So I would continue to appreciate your prayers, as I’m sure Joel would too, that our visas would come through without any additional hassles, and we could get on our way in the not too distant future. Thank you to all of you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers throughout this time.

As soon as I know when we’re heading out I will pass along the happy news. Until then, God bless, and thanks again!

Hey everyone,

I made it to Akron for orientation! I arrived yesterday afternoon with several others after a brief layover in Chicago. We flew into Harrisburg where we were met by a couple vans to take us to the MCC headquarters in Akron. And yes, it is Akron, Pennsylvania, not Akron, Ohio. Several people have inquired along those lines...

I've met lots of people here from all over the world, including several others from Calvin that I didn't know would be here, so that was fun. My roommate is from Brazil, which is very cool, I'm trying to use the tiny bit of Portuguese I know.

In a few minutes we have a worship service and then later today more of the orientation activities really begin. It looks like we'll have a fair amount of free time here too to explore Akron and the surrounding area, a few of us are thinking about going mini golfing tonight!

No word yet as far as when our Brazilian visas will arrive, so not sure how long we'll be here past everyone else. I did meet Joel, who is also going to the same region in Brazil, so it will be him and me staying here for an extra, as yet undetermined amount of time.

Alright, that is all for now, just wanted to give a brief update and say that I arrived here as planned. Now that I'm here I can't wait to get down to Brazil, but all in due time. More updates later, thank you again to all of you!

The good news is that tomorrow morning at 6 I will fly out of SeaTac on my way to Pennsylvania to start orientation! Hooray! The not so good news is that Joel, the other SALTer going to Brazil, and I will be in Pennsylvania for roughly an extra week, waiting for our visas to come through. We got word last week that they were approved and we were both very excited and relieved. However, apparently it takes the consulate an additional 12 days to actually issue the visas, so they will not be ready by the time we were scheduled to depart for Brazil.

It is a little disappointing to be this close only to have to wait another week, but the time will be well spent. Joel and I will have a chance to familiarize ourselves more with MCC, which I am excited about, since I really know relatively little about the organization. We will also be starting work on our Portuguese using the Rosetta Stone software I've heard so much about. We might also do some other volunteer work around there, whatever they come up with to keep us busy!

So I will pass on word as soon as I know when I'll actually be heading down to Brazil, but in the meantime I would really appreciate your prayers that this visa business can resolve itself in a reasonable time frame, and also as all of us SALTers travel to Akron, PA, for orientation and then to our respective destinations.

Thanks!
Mike