So, this morning I took off by myself to drive to Flor. I had my trusty GPS with me. I was tooling right along until I missed a crucial turn. I got horribly lost. ("Why didn't you follow the GPS?" one might ask. Well, that is a good question and one that is asked of me often. No good answer, just that my son Hunter's first complete sentence was, "Mommy, are we lost again?") So, not to worry, I finally heeded the British voiced GPS to make a U-turn and return to highlighted route and then "turn right on road." Remember, there are no addresses or street signs in Honduras. So I pulled halfway into a driveway, put the car in reverse, and clunk. Car died. I could not restart it.
I called David, got Dony instead. Dony is the lawyer at the office and speaks pretty good English.
Dony: "Where are you?"
Me: "I don't know." I started to describe where I was (hard to do since I had no idea...) "I am on top of a big hill, there is a big concrete building. I see a business called..." Dony had no idea where I was either.
Dony said he would find David. Soon David called and we went through the same conversation except David recognized the business and knew exactly where I was. He found me and tried restarting the car by holding the cable and battery terminal together with his hand! No luck. So he left and picked up a mechanic. The mechanic got my car started by taking David's battery OUT OF HIS CAR and using two big wrenches to connect them together (no sissy jumper cables for him!). Whooom! My car started right up. Meanwhile, some ladies were sweeping the street with regular house brooms and makeshift dustpans. The lady working on my side did not just go around my car. She swept underneath it as far as she could possibly reach! I learned these are government jobs for minimum wage to help the impoverished. (Minimum wage is about $7/day.)
I followed David to a store to get a new battery. This is how that works... We parked on the side of a major, busy road. The mechanics tested and then replaced my battery right on the side of the road! While I was waiting I bought a bunch of tiny bananas (a different variety than our US bananas), a cantaloupe, and a watermelon.
 |
| Where you buy fruit when getting a new battery |
 |
| Drive-by battery repair! |
What did I take away from this adventure? I was never afraid. I knew that I was under the protection of God. I absolutely knew that David would be able to find me. I figured the car just needed to be jumped (as it were) and that I just needed to be patient. The Bible verse, "Don't be afraid, just believe." truly resonated with me during my adventure.
This is a long one already so I will save the subject of my meeting (yes, I did finally make it to the office!) for the next entry. It'll be worth the wait I promise.
Hasta luego!
Amanda
that reminds me of one of the lines from one of our favorite kathy mattea Christmas songs: "why oh why are you afraid? has this world stripped you of your faith?" i cannot remember how many times i've been afraid or worried or stressed only to remember that sentiment and become totally relaxed. when something troubling comes up i like to play the worst case scenario game. usually it doesn't take a lot of faith (i.e. what's the worst case scenario of getting to class five minutes late? the professor calls me out? am i going to still be upset about that six months from now? or even next week? probably not). but really they're all easy when you have faith (i.e. what's the worst case scenario of breaking my ankle? three months on crutches? what's three months of character building compared to the rest of my life? what's three months of inconvenience compared to eternity with God? not that big a deal, really).
ReplyDelete