Dear all,
Well, my trip back to Colombia was anything but “uneventful”: I took the [“NJ Transit/Septa”] train x New Brunswick to Philly for about $10.00 senior discount [half price], then I got the $5.00 Megabus to DC. I had a nice visit with our cousins, D. & K., in Falls Ch., VA, but had to spend the whole day there in bed with the horrible reaction I was having to my shots for Colombia.
Then, I took another $5.00 Megabus to Charlotte. K. & D. were up in Syracuse, visiting their mother, so I stayed in their parish. I was able to take the new local metro train downtown, but missed my connection to the local bus to the parish & took the wrong bus & had to get off about a mile x the parish. Fortunately, as I was walking up & down the hills with my luggage, a neighbor offered to take me to the church.
I had a very nice visit there in Charlotte & proceeded to Atlanta with yet another $5.00 Megabus ticket. When I arrived I just made the connection to “Marietta, GA,” on a local Greyhound bus to visit our cousin, D. & his daughter, M. & husband. There was a “scam artist” selling “metro passes” in order to get from the “Megabus stop” to the Greyhound bus station and I only had about 25 min. to make the connection. It all worked out just fine & D. took me to the Greyhound station in Marietta to get back to Atlanta.
After spending a couple days there with D., I took the Greyhound overnite to FL, but ended up spending 22 hours on the bus because I messed up my planning to get to “Ave Maria” university, near “Naples”, FL. That ticket only cost me $31.00, though. Besides that, there was a drunk on the bus who decided to sit in 1 of the only 2 seats left on the bus, next to me, & had to be taken off the bus by the police at the next stop at 12:30 a.m.
I also had a very nice visit with Ken & Lia, our friends from NJ who had moved to “Ave Maria” university. They drove me early in the morning to Ft. Lauderdale to catch my flight to Bogotà, Colombia. I had decided early on not to visit our missions in Venezuela because of all the trouble there. [I had passed thru Venezuela 20 years ago. Also: we have turned all of our missions on the northern coast x Colombia over to diocesan priests.]
A nice young lady on the plane accompanied me to our house in “Modelia”, a “barrio” about 10 minutes from the airport here in Bogotà.
Well, I just had my first talk with Fr. Armando, new regional superior. The community is discerning the possibility x working with Afro Americans in Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast, possibly beginning in December, 2016.
In the meantime, I have been asked to help Padre Oscar here in Modelia with details in the regional house – upkeep, purchasing, “go-for”.
Padre Fernando, the regional administrator, will help me with my documents, including a “driver’s license”; I never had one when I was here before since most of my work was far from the capital.
I think that this may be a good way for me to get back into “the swing of things” and to get to know the fathers here in Colombia, once again.
Van
revvanahager@yahoo.com, “Consolata Missionaries”, Box 5550, Somerset, NJ 08875-5550 732 297 9191
As of July 1st, 2016, my address in Colombia is: Instituto de la Consolata para Misiones, Calle 24A #81-14 Santa Fè de Bogotà, Colombia, So. America –
Tel. (1)4296511 Fax (1) 2631472