Blanca's Return

Last week on Monday, Dad, Brian, Sylvia and Me got in the car, backed out of the driveway and began our journey to Asunción. The reason we were going was because, oh joy of joys, Blanca was coming home.

Blanca Liz Sostoa is our cousin from my mother's side, who has lived with us for six years in Puerto Barra and Naranjal for educational reasons. Over the years she has become an integral part of the family, to the point that Mom and Dad affectionately call her their ''adopted daughter''. Her kind-hearted disposition has, and still does, endeared her to every person who meets her. It is partially because of that that last year she went to the States, to Arrowhead Bible College, with a full scholarship, courtesy of our friends in Absarokee, Montana. A group of the church there came down to Puerto Barra in February last year came down to enlarge the Aché's church, and that's when the idea came up. So in September Blanca packed up and got in to the plane to São Paulo, Brazil, and ultimately Montana.

A year had passed now and we were going down the highway to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay and where Blanca's plane would touch down. As the land flashed by us and the warm air rushed through the window, I had to say that she had picked a good time to come home. Weather down here has been uncommonly warm and clear, so Blanca would have a warm welcome, so to speak. 

We arrived at the Mission House (the place where the people of our mission can come to stay when they are in town) at nightfall. Mom was there, having come a few days before us because of Ministry (of Education) work. We unpacked the vehicle and, with barely time to change our clothes, we went to a church service in which Dad was making a presentation about the Aché, in a church called Renuevo. 

The next morning we went to the airport. We arrived at ten. A huge crowd was there at the exit gate, awaiting their own respective loved ones. Among the throng we found Sinthya and Fatima, Blanca’s sisters, and Fatima’s little son, and we joined forces. The place looked like this: on one end the Gate, which was made of glass but shaded with a cigarette advertisement so that the other side was invisible, and the crowd was in a rough square around it, held back on the sides by dividers, the kind that infests airports. So there we were Sinthya and Sylvia in the forefront facing the gate, Mom, Fatima, Brian and me a little farther behind, and Dad on the side. All the while we were craning our necks every time that the gate opened while our hearts and expectations jumped. But it wasn’t her. And thus it kept going. Sylvia and Sinthya craned their necks so much that Mom said that if Blanca didn’t come soon then they’d turn into giraffes. Gradually the people left after great displays of joy when the people they were waiting for came through the gate. And time wore on.

It was eleven thirty. We were almost the last people there. Some talk had already arisen about whether she might have been delayed or missed her flight or some other unforeseeable plight.  But when we least expected it she appeared! Sylvia and Sinthya screamed and ran to embrace her. Radiant smiles and hugs all around. She had come back quite Americanized, what with wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and tied hair and speaking Spanglish. Mom teased her that now she would need a translator. After everyone had their say we headed to the vehicle. Turns out that she took so long because her bags got left in São Paulo (typical) and she was filing a complaint. But everything was well; we’d just need to get the bags tomorrow. So we went back to the city, happy as clams with her and her sisters and her bags with us. Blanca had returned.