Crazy Things Missionaries Do - Going the Long Way Around

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Years ago when your Uncle Byron and I first came to Brazil, we started working with a small church whose missionary pastor had gone to the States for furlough.  We didn't have a house of own or even a car.  We rented a small apartment near the MK school where we both taught some classes and rode the bus or walked wherever we needed to go.  That included going to church.  

The church wasn't real far away and the bus we had to take went right near our apartment and let us off very close to the church.  Then it continued on its way around the city.  It was called the Grande Circular I.  That means Big Circular.  It was called that because it made a circle around the whole city. 

Now Fortaleza is a very big city.  Currently it has a population close to three million people.  I always felt like I had only seen a little part of that big city - the American school, the beach and the church.  So one Sunday morning when we were waiting for the bus to go back home from church, I said to Byron that it would be really cool to catch the bus in the opposite direction from "home" take the whole big circle around the city like tour bus. Uncle Byron said, Okay, and off we went!

We saw parts of Fortaleza that I had never seen and never saw again after that!  It took almost three hours for us to get home.  We went through three different big bus terminals and saw gobs of neighborhoods.  And we got very, very hungry!  We had left around noon from church and got home in the late afternoon.  

My crazy idea had been fulfilled and we returned home hot, sweaty, thirsty and hungry.  The next time we were waiting on the bus, Uncle Byron said would you like to do that again?  I said, Nah!  But it was fun once!

Lonely Planet

A few years later I was with the ladies of our church going to a meeting at another church.  We rented a van to take us all.  The driver took a crazy route to take more time and charge us more, and I questioned his choice.  Mr. Driver asked how that little freckled face American knew anything about his big city.  When I started naming off the neighborhoods and streets that he should be taking, he hushed and knew he'd been had and went back to the main route!  Sort of interesting that I knew my way around in a large part to riding buses and especially that one big ride all around the city on a crazy day!