Road Trip

We're going to Texas. The church there has asked us to come visit; they're very interested in becoming our sponsor. One of the things we need to talk about is finances. They don't know how much money we need yet. The cost of living has gone through the roof for Americans living in Brazil since we left two years ago. I won't go into all the details (mostly because I don't know all the details) but I will share a couple facts I do know. When we moved to Porto Alegre in 2002 we bought a nice, reliable car for about $12,000. The same car - not a new model of the same car but the same exact car from 2002 - would cost us around $40,000 today. The exchange rate reached almost 4 reais to the dollar while we were there. Now it's less than 2 to 1.

The bad news is that we will probably need to raise more money this time around. The good news is that God is in charge and He has unlimited resources.