Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Divine Appointment with the Mechanic's Brother

     As we are are spending the next 7 weeks in prayer and preparation with our family, friends, and partners, I am seeing the beginning of the life we dreamed of not too many years ago. God is giving us glimpses of our calling as we transition from learner to teacher (even though we will always be learning!). So, what are we launching into? The following is a description of one afternoon where God had His plans in mind while we were trying to carry out ours:

Sunday: Singing in the Rain
2:00 - Pack up kids and go buy fried rice for our friends whose baby is in the hospital
3:00 - Car breaks down just as the rain starts. Stuck on a main  road by the river.
4:00 - Rain lets up. 10 minutes later our mechanic's brother arrives with more rain. He gets the car working and drives us to the hospital to give our friends (who have had no food all day) the fried rice. We drive through several feet of water, and I ask the brother to wait in the car on the curbside while I give our friends the food.
4:30 The hospital staff can't help me find our friends because (as so often happens here because we don't call each other by name) I don't know our friends' names! I call Chris who is in the middle of teaching the Bible in a village. He calls his friend, the baby's father, who turns out to be far away getting his motto fixed. Chris talks to the hospital staff because I've exhausted my Khmer vocabulary. Finally, I wade back to the car still hanging onto the bag of fried rice.
5:00 All three kids are screaming and the poor mechanic's brother looks panicked. A passy for Marcus, a book for Melanie, and a drink of water for Maggie, and we're stuck in traffic on Monivong Boulevard. The kids soon are begging for a story, so I tell several stories of God's power (in very easy English the brother can understand - I guess I was preaching =) ). 100 rounds of Old McDonald's Farm, Jesus Loves Me, and Jesus Loves the Little Children, and we're getting close to the mechanic's shop.
 6:00 After nursing Marcus sitting beside this very young man and getting stared at in the slow traffic because we obviously are the fair skinned family of this Khmer man driving our car (how is it that some of those kids had blonde hair and blue eyes - amazing!), we finally arrive all laughing together at the shop. I run down the road to hail a tuk-tuk.
6:30 We try to meet up with our friend, but it turns out he went back to the hospital (surely miscommunication doesn't happen after a year and a half on the field!), and I wonder how long fried rice will last. Cold and soaking wet, we stop at a nearby restaurant  where we meet up with an equally wet Chris, eat, and go home.

What a wonderful way God chose for a mechanic's brother to hear the Good News!

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