Train ride through the mountains in Brazil

It's hard to believe we will be home in one week from today!
Excited to get planted firmly as a family instead of bouncing around Brazil but at the same time I'm very sad to be leaving in so many ways.
Friday we got everything done for Donei's physical, shots and passport so that took care of most of the paperwork we needed to do in Curitiba. Lino will be wrapping at the paperwork up today and meeting with us later to give us the paperwork to take to Rio. Our flight to Rio (which will be Donei's first plane ride) leaves on Tuesday evening and is about a hour and a half flight. A good  "break him in" flight before the biggie.......The International flight from Rio to Charlotte is around 10hours I think.
Mike and Mary came in on Saturday to Curitiba but what was suppose to be a 4 hour car trip turned into much more than they bargained for! We expected them around noon on Saturday but instead received a phone call from Mary explaining they would be much later than expected........
Along the way the police will randomly pull cars over to inspect, check, whatever~ Well at that moment in time, they were the ones who got pulled over for inspection. They searched their car, made them empty all their luggage to search it, wanted to see all their paperwork about their kids and the car. After about an hour of sitting there the police came out and asked Mike to come with him. Another hour later they were cleaning out their car with their personal belongings because they were impounding their car!!!! Here apparently their was a tax of some sort that had not been paid for the last two years that Mike and Mary had no idea about so they impounded their car! So here they are 3 hours from CLM with 3 children and no car! They had to take the bus then to Curitiba and figure out how to deal with getting this resolved. They have to pay around $R1000 to get their car back. They are attempting to take care of this issue this morning and hopefully be able to take the bus back to where their car is. Aye yie yie! We feel so bad for them............BUT the good news is that we got to spend our last days with the Cochran's before leaving Brazil. We went to "Outback Steak House" on Saturday night.................YUM!!! Sure beats beans and rice! :))

Looking forward to seeing everyone back home next week...........Please continue to pray for us and the adjustment for Donei as he leaves his country.