Saturday, July 05, 2014

A Little Detour

After a relatively (because it was pretty much relatives) small picnic gathering yesterday, several of us decided to go watch the fireworks down at Canandaigua Lake. We set off in three different cars with the intent to possibly meet up upon our arrival, but thanks to some extenuating circumstances, my carload did not arrive until after the show had already begun.

We took a detour to grab an ice cream on the way out of town (I owed Josiah a cone from a few visits back...) and took a slightly different route than usual to Canandaigua which put us directly behind a vehicle that blew a tire in front of us. BOOM! Thankfully, that vehicle was just pulling up to or away from a 4-way stop when the blowout occurred. There was no hideous accident and we are all grateful. As they pulled off the road and into the grass, we pulled over beside them to see if everything was alright and if they had a phone.

They had a phone, but their spare tire was back at the woman's apartment another town over.When the state police pulled up, we offered to take the woman, who spoke limited English, and one of her companions to get the spare tire. To make a long story short, the "spare" was probably the original and had already encountered some trouble of its own. When we took it to get air, it only leaked back out with a loud hiss. Fix-a-flat wouldn't have helped.

To make more of the long story short, we found the woman, and her daughter, who was now accompanying us as a translator, were from El Salvador, which excited Bethany greatly. (She was there five years ago.) We ended up taking the woman and her daughter to meet the rest of their group at their church as the pastor had gone to the vehicle to retrieve the others and they were no longer stranded. The woman tried to pay me for my "trouble" but we took hugs and a "gracias" or two instead, and assured them they could pay us in pupusas at some point in the future. So, anyway, we did get to Canandaigua, just in time to catch of bit of the show, just not in time to find the rest of our group.



8 comments:

  1. Sounds like your detour as a "Divine Appointment"...I love it when we can flow with God's design. Great story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, it was and I found it amazing once again how God so often puts His children together in these kinds of situations. We really didn't help much as far as the vehicle goes, nothing was open the evening of July 4, but we did lend a hand providing some love and encouragement.

      Delete
  2. How sweet of you to do an RAK. And you got ice cream, too! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shhh... Don't tell anyone I got ice cream too. It's a secret. ;)
      You should have seen the look on Jakie's face when Joe and I got into the car with ice cream and he didn't have any. Ha ha! Beth jumped out and ran to get him one.

      Delete
  3. How fortunate that their tire blew just at that place and time and that your car was there. What a blessing you were to them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As long as we were an encouragement, I'm happy. It was a blessing for sure.

      Delete
  4. God works in mysterious ways.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He does. Sometimes I think He's just testing us to see where our priorities are. Or show us where they might be.

      Delete