That Time Both Our Vehicles Wrecked the Same Day

No, we didn't run into each other! While my mom was here we had gotten a flat tire on our SUV, a Nissan Patrol. Jimmy took it to get it plugged. He saw them put the tire back on with a gun thingy.

Jimmy's parents had bought plane tickets to fly us all to KS for 2 weeks. We were flying out about a week after she left. Our flight was leaving at 6 AM on Thursday morning. About 4 hours into our Wednesday trip to the capital Jimmy was passing a semi. He wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, you pass a lot of large trucks on the 2 lane highway. As he merged back into his lane I felt a bump, then it felt like we were kind of fish tailing it. I thought maybe we had a busted tire. I just knew the semi behind us was going to hit us as Jimmy was trying to maintain control while getting us to the shoulder. About the time we were off the road Jimmy said look and I saw our tire rolling down the other side of the road. Awesome!

How does your tire just fall off? If that had been a front tire I wouldn't be typing right now. God really protected us. Somehow the semi didn't hit us. Somehow this happened on a straightaway were there was actually a shoulder on the side of the road, one perfectly the size of our truck. Once you got out of the truck you were in the lane. Due to the mountains in Guatemala, there often times aren't shoulders or straightaways.

But there we were 4 hours from home and about 3 hours from the capital. We don't know anyone there. We started praying that God would help us. 

Jimmy got out of the truck and started walking to find a mechanic. He assumed we did some damage to our vehicle dragging it a ways on its rotor. All the stems that the lugnuts screw onto were sheared  off, but that's ok because all the lugnuts were missing anyway. 

He walked about 2 kilometers and came across an open mechanic shop, but no one was there. He moved on and walked another kilometer. Soon 2 guys drove up along next to him and asked if he owned the truck they saw on the side of the road. They said, "Get in, we will help you!" 

Now in this area of the country guys wear guns on their hips, flashy ones. They also have enough clips going all the way around their belts to be involved in a serious shootout and not lose due to running out of bullets. That's the way these guys were. One owned a mechanic shop and I assume the other was one of his workers. They were 2 of the nicest people we have ever met. They had no reason to be kind to us or help us, but they went out of their way to fix our problems.  

{Silly Jonah waiting in the car}

 Jimmy had told me not to get out of the vehicle, so I didn't. I was worried that due to the small shoulder, that we were going to be hit. People pass like crazy on this highway and drive drunk. We see a lot of messed up stuff and I was just worried for my kiddos' safety. But there we sat. I was praying the entire time! 

The 2 men drove Jimmy back to our truck. I was happy to see them! They looked at our vehicle and told Jimmy they would send another guy in a few minutes to drive Jimmy into town (20 minutes away) to buy the parts that he needed. They left and then sure enough a few minutes later a guy showed up and took Jimmy to find some parts that would work. It was a total of about $10 worth of parts. This guy wouldn't take any money for gas. About an hour later the other 2 guys came back and bending over into the lane of oncoming traffic with our truck jacked up on 2 different jacks, fixed our truck. They wouldn't take any money either. 

So we went from thinking our vehicle was all messed up and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, probably going to miss our flight, to everything was fixed in about 4 hours for $10. 

 

Our boys asked who those guys were with guns. We said, "These are the people God sent to help us!"

And we were so thankful. It was really neat to see God orchestrate everything right there in front of our kids. There was also another very nice man who was sent by a friend who got there right as they finished up our truck. He had come to pick us up but instead only followed us to the tire repair place after these guys fixed our truck. We had to have the tire that fell off put on our spare rim. He was just listening and watching to make sure everything was ok. Yet another person we will probably never be able to return the favor to.

{Tire shop}

We are so humbled by all the people that God sent our way. How do you repay them? I pray that God sends people as kind in their next time of need.

We got about 2.5 hours of sleep that night in a hotel before getting up to drive to the airport. After our trip to the States before we left the capital to return home we got a car wash while in a parking garage. For some reason the guy had a riveter and fixed our bumper while it was in a parking space. I'm telling you God took care of every single detail of our big ol' mess!

Before our 7 hour drive home we got it checked out at a mechanic shop just in case. We found out our brakes pads were worn, so that was another positive since we wouldn't have known otherwise. We replaced those before coming down out of the mountains. Everything else looked great!

Now as for the other vehicle. The same day we were sitting on the shoulder missing a tire, Jimmy had left his pickup at the farm so that they could still run and pick up chicken feed and other necessities over the 2 weeks and also pick up the teens from Santa Rita to come to youth group Wednesday nights. Well while they were turning left into the village to pick up the teens someone tried to pass them on the left. This is a common problem here due to a "turn single" meaning multiple things like "pass me" and "I'm turning". Anyway they got t-boned. Thankfully the next day they went back with the police and the other driver paid for most of the repairs. They called to tell us what had happened but decided to save it for another day due to us being broken down at the time ourselves. Haha! God knows how much you can handle at one time! Thankfully no one was hurt in that incident either!

Tire Troubles

We were having some tire issues before we left for furlough. We need to buy new tires, but we have to drive to Belize to do it. The tires there are half the price and better quality. We just have to make the time, so until then...

This happened:

And then it happened again, but obviously we didn't have a spare... and our very kind friend who came to rescue us left his lights on, so his truck died:

Jimmy had to buy 2 used tires after that to get us by for a little while longer and then this happened two days later to one of those:

I left at least a half mile of road gators from that one!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: The man who sold us the 2 used tires (one of which shredded 2 days later) warned us, "You can't just buy tires anywhere in Guatemala, they sell you junk that they retread with a dremel tool. They'll only last for a week. My tires will last you several months... I mean years!" And there was the Red Flag. 

A Day In Our Life

None of our days are typical really. I just decided this morning I would pick today to take a "snapshot" so that you could see what one was like... actually I wish I had taken more snapshots of this day!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

4:00 - I wake up to feed the boys.

5:00 - Lucha sees a scorpion crawling down the hall and tells us about it.

5:05 - Jimmy wakes up and kills the scorpion. (FYI: A scorpion killing kit is the same as a spider killing kit, just change the flipflop to a larger shoe.)

Lucha proudly standing in front of the squashed scorpion!

5:10 - I work on and finish my first set of Bible story finger puppets for the boys. This one was the story of Zacchaeus. I am seriously considering selling some of these sets on etsy, but that's another post. I am having too much fun creating them. / Hang some laundry on the line.

Here's Zacchaeus

5:15 - Our neighbor starts revving his truck engine right outside the boys' nursery window... I spend the next 5 minutes trying to figure out WHY he does this EVERY weekday morning and if there is any way this could possibly be benificial to his vehicle. I decide that it doesn't matter and that I need to work on the whole loving your neighbor thing. The boys stir, but don't waken.

7:00 - Jonah and Silas wake up for their second feeding of the day (Side Note: It just happened to be 3 hrs later, I do not believe in the whole making your baby wait 3 hrs thing.)

7:40 - Playtime with boys! We sing and play with finger puppets. They have tummy time in Jonah's crib together. They grab each other's hand and smile at each other a lot now. I enjoy watching them interact.

Silas and his baby pushup!

Jonah and his baby pushup!

9:00 - Jimmy works in his garden. / Boys go back to sleep.

A beautiful okra flower in Jimmy's garden!

10:00 - We wake up the boys and leave the house to drive to Santa Elena (the "big city" in Petén about 40 minutes or so from our house.)

11:00 - We drop off our micro to get an oil change and to fix a patched leaky tire. They say it is going to take an 1.5hr. Thus begins the "1.5" jokes. In Latin America you take whatever estimated time frame you are given and multiply it by a "distance from reality factor"! Petén's distance factor is a pretty large number.

11:10 - Abel meets us at the mechanic shop to pick up the title to the Blazer that Luis needed us to sign over and then drops us off at the Pizza Hut.

11:15 - Our plan is to wait in Pizza Hut until the micro is finished since there is no way the 4 of us can fit in a tuktuk. We chose the Pizza Hut because it is air conditioned, has a large booth big enough for us all to fit in and I can feed the boys without an audience. Plus they serve delicious coffee! (Side Note: I'm not sure if it is the same in the States, but PH has THE BEST hot wing sauce. Jimmy ruined it for me though because he told me that the hot wings were 60 cents a piece. So now I just buy a little cup of the sauce and dip my pizza into it. Honestly it is THE BEST hot sauce I have tasted. I wish I could buy a large bottle of it. I would dip everything in it!

Our normal booth that we fit in with both carriers (old photo).

11:16 - The waitress tells us that the section that has our booth in it is closed right now, so we have to squeeze into a little one by the entrance.... oh well. (Another Side Note: We usually skype in Pizza Hut on our laptops with our parents so that they can see the boys. The internet in our town is too slow. It was too noisy around this booth, so no grandparents time today.)

11:30 - Our pizza comes, but the waitress forgot my hot sauce.

11:45 - Waitress comes back with hot sauce, Silas makes a humongous diaper!

11:55 - Back from changing diaper, eat my cold but deliciously spicy pizza.

12:15 - Jimmy calls mechanic. They say that it will be another 45 minutes, but that they're "almost done". We enjoy our time just chatting together and playing with the boys.

1:00 - Jimmy calls mechanic. This time they say, "Hey, your tire has 10 holes in it. You need to buy a new one." Jimmy says that's fine, we'll buy 2.

1:05 - We leave Pizza Hut and decide to kill time at the Maxi Bodega and dollar store... or at least what I call the dollar store. I find some alphabet magnets for the boys! Silas makes another humongous diaper... this one's a change your outfit one.

1:30 - Jimmy calls mechanic. They say, "Fijese, we don't have any tires this size, but we will start calling some friends to see if they do."

2:15 - The boys need to eat again, so we decide to try and find another cool secluded place... like an ice cream store... right?

Saritas (on right) has delicious ice cream. This is at a new shopping center across from the airport. It is the most modern "looking" area within hours.

2:16 - After walking in we realize that there is NO air and it seriously smells like the outhouses in Santa Rita, but figured there weren't any better options, so we sit down.

2:17 - We feel bad sitting in there without ordering anything so Jimmy gets a small sundae and I get a Mirinda.

2:18 - I realize that I have had 3 coffees and a Mirinda to drink all day and wonder how my body even makes milk.

2:35 - I feel bad changing Jonah inside the ice cream shop even though no one could smell him over the stench already there, so I take him outside to change him on a bench.

2:40 - I come back inside and tell Jimmy that it is actually cooler outside, so we leave.

2:41 - Jimmy calls mechanic. They say that a friend has tires, told us the price, and that it would be 45 min.

2:42 - I realize the cake shop next door has air conditioning, so we move in there. These cakes are very pretty, but very Chapin (Guatemalan), and since they don't serve any drinks we didn't buy anything. The lady was very nice and loved playing with the boys, so she let us just sit in there.

Before Jonah really let loose on Daddy! His spare shirt was in the micro!

3:24 - The micro's ready. Jimmy takes a tuk tuk to go pick it up. (It took 4.5hrs to get an oil change and fix the tire.)

We have a rearview mirror again! Ever since the whole windshield incident Jimmy couldn't get the old glass off to be able to glue on the new one... he was happy.

3:45 - We go by market to pick up a Kekchi couple from New Horizon. They are longtime friends and the lady has been very sick. She kept going to a witch doctor and finally we convinced her to let us take her to a real doctor. She was very nervous about this, but in so much pain, finally willing to try it.

3:50 - Dr. Aragon (my Petén OB) sees her. He is very patient with her. I was going to go in with her, but since her husband was there I figured that he would instead. I stayed in the micro with the boys, and somehow Jimmy ended up in there with both of them! She was too shy to talk to the doctor. She told Jimmy, "He doesn't speak Kekchi, so I will talk to you and you can tell him what I say." The thing is, Jimmy doesn't speak Kekchi either, he is just used to her broken Spanish... I thought it was cute!

4:10 - After an ultrasound and examination, we leave the doctor's office with a diagnosis and some pills... everyone's happy.

4:20 - The 6 of us stop by my eye doctor. I have had an eye infection for 3 weeks now and can't get rid of it. My doctor was supposed to give me the all clear to wear my contacts again, but she wasn't there. She's in Honduras... oh well.

4:25 - We stop by the post office to check our PO box. (We can get bubble mailers from the States for somewhat reasonable prices... really unreasonable, but the Grandmas like sending stuff!)

We had 2 from my mom waiting on us! These had clothes for the boys and food for us!

5:00 - We drop off the couple at the gate to New Horizon and pick up Mateo.

5:15 - We make it home and realize that 2 pieces of our left over pizza fell out of the box in the micro. Fije and Lucha are very happy about that.

5:16 - In her typical "you'd have to have lived on the streets to have skills like this" fashion, Fije stole half of Luchas'.

5:17 - Feeling sorry for Lucha, I tore off half of one of my remaining good pieces to give to her.

5: 20 - Jimmy cleaned up for the adult Bible study in Santa Rita. / I cleaned Mateo's finger he had sliced with a machete and got him a new bandaid.

5:30 - Jimmy and Mateo leave for Santa Rita. / I feed the boys. Afterwards we read a lot of books and sing.

6:15 - They make it to Santa Rita.

6:30 - Adult Bible study starts. It ended up being the biggest turnout yet! 4 new teenagers came too and participated.

7:45 - Jimmy and Mateo leave Santa Rita. / I laugh at Lucha for following me around like a cat because of the loud thunder. She blocks the doorway while I read to the boys so that I can't shut the nursery door... scaredy cat! I let her because she's cute.

8:25 - Jonah and Silas fall asleep.

8:45 - Jimmy's home! (It took an hour because he stopped by an ATM.) Jimmy tells me about what I missed at the Bible study and I tell him about what adorable things our boys did while he was gone.

9:0o - We heat up some yummy soup Jimmy had made in the crock pot the day before. He's a crock pot master. We continue watching a Doris Day movie that Jimmy had DVR'd for me.

9:15 - We pause movie because of a thud we both hear.

9:16 - We discover it was another very large scorpion. It had fallen out of a plant that was on the wall (very close to Jimmy's head) and had landed on the tile.

I know... I need to sweep up the ceiling flakes/wall flakes/lizard poop/dust under my end table. Our windows are always open, so you get over it.

9:18 - Jimmy kills scorpion.

9:20 - We eat some yellow Peeps that came in the bubble mailers and then just talk and spend time together.

10:30 - We decide at least one of us needed to go to sleep. Jimmy stays up to work on translating class outlines for the Kekchi Institute module next month.

We Would Like To Introduce You...

to some of the people in Santa Rita. We spent some time there today with many who have been to our Bible study. They are so nice, much more open and friendly than when we started in New Horizon... glad we didn’t go here first! New Horizon makes us thankful for each step forward. The couple above is Joaquin and Consuela. Please pray that they will continue to come and eventually come to know the Lord.

Consuela kept laughing when we took her picture! She was shelling beans. They were purplish. I asked her how she was going to prepare them. Later she gave us a whole bag full. That bag represented a lot of work. I can’t wait to try them!

This is Aaron. When he came to our Bible study, he loved the praise and worship time. We knew he enjoyed music, but we had no idea what kind of gifted musician he was. He makes instruments. He has made several violins, a guitar, and a marimba. He has taught himself how to play them.

We do not know much about his background, but he told us he knew 5 hymns. He pick up one of his violins and started tuning it by ear. Then he picked up a bow that he had made from some dried plants and started playing “What a Friend We Have In Jesus.” Jimmy and I couldn’t stop thinking about what this man could have done if he grew up in the States and had been given opportunities. He is just the neatest guy. Most people here are tone deaf and then today we find this man with this unbelievable talent.

Cristina is moving out of her house in Flores and only keeping her home in Remate. She told us she had some furniture for sale. Today we came home with this! I love it. It is solid wood and has a beautiful dark stain on it. I’m not sure what to do with all of this new storage! It will be going in my kitchen... I now have 2 drawers and 2 cabinets in my kitchen!

Thank you for praying for Jimmy’s trip to Guate. When he dropped my Blazer off the mechanic said that he had brought it to the right place. He named the transmission before he even looked at it. He said, “We fix these all the time and others just like you... Jimmys!” He was proud of his joke! Jimmy’s dental appointment was not as good, and he has to go back when we pick the truck up for the doctor to finish what he paid for. Good dentists are hard to find wherever you are at in the world. At least here is is about 80% cheaper, so that makes you feel a little better.

Please Pray For Jimmy's Travels

Jimmy is having my truck towed to Guate today to get the transmission worked on. We have given up on all the mechanics here. He is riding with the driver. Please pray that he gets there safely. Jimmy woke up and 4:45 this morning and then the driver was over 2.5 hours late. We had to call and wake him up. The mechanic in Guate is open until 7:30, please pray he gets there in time. Jimmy will do some grocery shopping and look for some tables for Santa Rita. He also has a dentist appointment tomorrow. He will fly back tomorrow evening.

The Bible studies in NH were good on Sunday. School starts in Feb so hopefully people will get back into the swing of things. Gregory is back and will be staying all year for school. He is a really good influence, so we are thankful for that.

This is a shirt I made this past weekend. I am still learning. Curtains are much easier than clothes!

We spent several hours Monday evening sweeping all of our ceilings again and cleaning all the paint chips up. We thought since the rains have stopped, our ceiling would stop snowing, but we woke up Tuesday morning to find this...

We can’t make it stop! It is just always a mess. Our house looks like a blizzard. I am not sure how many paint chips we have consumed. They have been bothering our eyes. We have more eye boogers than Lucha. We have to dust off our heads when we leave. Thankfully the ceiling is highest over our bed, so no flakes fall on us while we sleep... God knows how much I can handle! When Jimmy gets back we will have to power wash the roof and then seal it ourselves. I can’t wait! Usually we have a problem with roofs leaking, this one is a new one for us!

We can no longer eat at our table because the flakes fall into our food.

This is just one day of paint dust in half of my kitchen.

Guatemala Is Treating Us Good

For the last few days we have heard metal on metal when we brake, so today we drove to Santa Elena and got the brake pads and two rotors replaced on Jimmy’s truck. It was around $80. The mechanics asked about my “automatico” and sadly Jimmy had to tell them it is still broken down in our yard like it has been for the last year. At least now we have one good experience with a mechanic in this country. It was even done on time... that is a first for here too!

Please keep praying for our Christmas drama; it is this Sunday. We have a lot of videotaping to do tomorrow and we are having some issues. My video camera may record a minute after you press the restart button about a dozen times. Melissa thoughtfully left her video camera for us to use, but we just found out it is too nice for my laptop! Please pray that we get it done somehow.

All of our props will soon be finished. Becca, do you recognize the roofing material! We would probably be finished with everything already if Lucha would stop eating chunks of our tomb!

After lots of TLC, my rose bushes finally have lavender (the photos makes them look pink) and white flowers on them.

For the month of December the Maxi Bodega gives out toy vouchers every time you buy groceries. We have have been saving ours. It was fun to spend them today. We found leggos for the little kids to play with during the adult Bible studies. We found hula-hoops for game time and found out that neither one of us can hula! We also got bubbles... all for free!

Lucha loved the bubbles!

Please pray for Aquilino’s mom. She lives by herself and had a cow on a rope. Something spooked the cow and her arm got caught in the rope and she was dragged. She is in the hospital in Chiquimula. She will live, but they are not sure how much use she will ever have of her arm and fingers. Aquilino is such a nice man and is really worried about his mom. He said that he was very thankful that God saved her life. He and his family are part of our Bible study in NH.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: Who would have ever thought an illegal Guatemalan living in the States would ever wire money to a Gringo living in Guatemala... well today that happened!