The ride home....

Wow!! What an unbelievable few weeks we’ve had!! There are so many crazy things to share with you through pictures and stories!! I’ll start with our trip back to Guidan Roumdji after our visit to Togo.

As you probably know by now, we are getting a truck that will help us to get out to our villages. So, we headed out from the capital driving. There were three vehicles headed out together. About an hour and a half down the road, our vehicle begins making a strange sound. It was a scraping sound coming from the hood of the truck. We pulled over and everyone stared in at the motor. Of course, no one really knew what to do so we called the office and they said to continue on to the next city and find a mechanic. Well, we never made it there. A few more feet down the road, the truck died. After some more phone calls and bringing out a mechanic from the nearest town, it was decided that we should sit and wait for someone from the capital to come out and tow it back into town. We waited there for two hours….imagine the site!! A group of nine white people and three vehicles on the side of the road in the middle of Africa!! LOL…we got many stares. Finally the guys came and they towed away our truck. That is, of course, after we stopped traffic by turning the car around in the middle of the road by pushing it!! Ahhh...only in Africa!!!

We continued on with the others, squishing all of our stuff into the remaining two vehicles. We went on down the road and ended up stopping at about 9:30 that night. After spending a night with some of our teammates there, the four of us – Jessica, Sarah, Melissa and myself – headed on home the next morning.

About twenty minutes down the road, it began to look like rain. We pulled over and got everything out of the back of the truck that couldn’t get wet and squished inside the cab. It’s a good thing too because it soon began to pour!! It was so much that we got stuck behind a slow truck and couldn’t see well enough to pass him. Finally it let up and we were able to go around him. After the first large town, we saw many cars parked ahead on the road. We slowed down and look in amazement at the river of water flowing over the road! It was rushing…pretty quickly…and the cars were all parked and people were wading out into it. We stopped behind the other cars and were about to get out to walk through to see how deep it was when the other cars began going. A bush taxi and a car started on through the river. We watched as they got safely across and figured that if they could make it, so could we. So, we slowly inched forward through the rushing water – I was praying out loud the whole time. Finally, we made it through!! Praise the Father for His protection and mercy!!! We came upon two more spots with water on the road but neither of them were near as bad as the first.

Finally, we made it home!!! What an adventure that was!!!

Here is a picture of some of the water we passed on the way home! There aren't just streams in the desert here...there are rivers!!! We thought it might be cool to start a rafting ministry out here - LOL...just kidding!!

Here is a view of us in our truck driving through the water. You can kind of see the people ahead of us helping to guide the cars along. Yep...we really did drive through all that water!!! But, as always, the Father is awesome and we made it through!!