Good news! Pastor Lucas of Union Church knows a luthier in Copacabana who will be able to tell me if my guitar is fixable. If so, then he’ll give me an estimate on fixing it. Labor is cheap here in Brazil, so I might even be able to afford the repair.

Thankfully, the US dollar gets a little stronger against the Real every day, so there is hope! One of our friends just bought a “cheap” guitar here for R$ 600, so a repair has to be less than that. Right?

I love my cherry red acoustic/electric guitar. It is the perfect size and shape for me. My parents, husband, and in-laws all contributed to its purchase the Christmas before last. My guitar and I have had some good times. We especially like to lead worship together. See how pretty it is?

When we flew here about a month ago, the case got all chewed up by the baggage machinery. I opened it up as soon as it came off the baggage carousel, though, and it looked all right.

Then, I got it out to play this afternoon for the first time.

Somehow, my sleep-deprived, just-off-the-plane self didn’t see this crack. This huge, jagged, potentially arm-stabbing crack. That I can’t fix. Or afford to pay someone to fix. To be honest, I don’t think this kind of thing can be fixed anyway. At least, not on less-than-$200 guitars. And I would have had to tell Delta about it within 7 days (not that they would have done anything about it, since guitars aren’t covered by their policy).

So I’m bummed. I can still practice with it, but I can’t lead worship with it. Sad.

Speaking of worship, to end on a high note, here’s our worship band from last Sunday:

That’s John, Amy, me, Jesse, and Alistair. Alex plays the piano, and Geison the drummer and Pastor Lucas on guitar are out of the shot.

Yesterday, Lorraine and I saw something that I can’t imagine very many people in history have seen. We saw hail in Rio de Janeiro. Honest to goodness, round, icy, falling-from-the-sky, size-of-a-good-size-peanut hail. This is easily the first time I have seen ice in Brazil that didn’t come out of a freezer somewhere, and probably the last.

I don’t know if this is at all common–the Brazilians I was with had never seen such a thing happen in Rio. And Google never has, either:

“Hailing in Rio de Janeiro” and “Hailed in Rio de Janeiro” also come up with nothing at the moment.