Journey Home

We had no access to the internet to post our blog on Monday or Tuesday while we were in Salto. Also since we were traveling from early Wednesday morning (Aug. 18) and through most of the day on Thursday (Aug. 19) we weren’t able to post on those days either. The “Trip to Salto” post and the “Journey Home” post had to be uploaded after we returned.


The journey home began from Paysandu at 8:30 am for the 5 ½ hour van ride to the Montevideo airport. When we arrived at the airport we found out that our flight home would be diverted through Buenos Aires, Argentina. The flight from Montevideo to Buenos Aires was only about 30 minutes long and only about half of the seats on the plane were filled. We were hoping that the overnight flight from Buenos Aires to Miami would have as many empty seats as this so we could have more room to “stretch out” and sleep. However, when we boarded the plane again, after the nearly 2-hour wait in Buenos Aires, we found that the overnight flight would be pretty full, having picked up a number of passengers in Argentina. The guys didn’t really seem to mind since they had the opportunity to visit another South American country (brief though it was).

The overnight flight was uneventful and we arrived in Miami at 5:30 am. Once we had claimed our luggage and cleared customs, we found the gate for our connecting flight to Chicago. It was there that everyone “crashed”. We had a three hour lay-over in Miami and almost everyone used the entirety of it to sleep. Some of them barely woke up in time to board the next plane and then slept again for the full 2 ½ hour flight to Chicago.

After a brief lay-over in Chicago, we boarded a much smaller plane for the flight to Green Bay. We arrived in Green Bay at around 1:00 pm (31 hours since our wake-up call to begin our journey home). We still had to claim our luggage and wait for the Northland van to pick us up. Unfortunately, we found a few “souvenir casualties” in the luggage. Among them, a glass Coca-cola bottle that was broken and obviously, no longer had Coke in it. The surrounding clothing seemed to absorb it nicely, or not-so-nicely, depending on the way you look at it. Isaac Cummins (Ben’s brother) arrived around 1:30 and we loaded everything up for the trip back to campus.
We were all starving so we stopped at Five Guys restaurant. Everyone enjoyed a traditional American burger and fries. Then, we stopped at the Soccer World store to give the guys a final opportunity to pick up anything they might need for the pre-season training that begins on Monday (Aug. 23). We arrived back at Northland at 4:00 pm (34 hours since we left our “home” in Uruguay).


We praise the Lord for a safe trip and for a blessed sports ministry experience. We are trusting Him to bring forth fruit from our labors in Uruguay. Many, many, many people heard the gospel. The churches and missionary teams we worked with in Uruguay have much follow-up work to do with the new contacts that were made. On our last day there, while reviewing our study in Galatians, we were challenged by the verse in Galatians 6:9 which says, “And let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”