One of the prayer requests posted last month was for an enclosed trailer to move us down here so I wanted to follow up on that. The week before we needed it, we still had no idea where we were going to get one. We continued to pray about it, ready to do something different if that’s what God showed us. As with the rest of our journey, He provided what we needed when we needed it. We didn’t even lose a day packing to buy it, because Lance’s parents were able to pick it up for us. We got it the evening before we needed to load it, and while it seemed “at the last minute” to us, we actually didn’t need it any earlier.
Our trip down went less than planned, to say the least. We had planned on leaving early Thursday morning (August 28), from Lance’s parents’ house, and arriving at Robbinsville, NC that evening, so we could we could be up the mountain and start moving in the first day possible on Friday morning. We would have Friday and Saturday to move in, Sunday to go to church and take some time to relax with the boys, and Monday to finish what we could before orientation on Tuesday. So not what happened.
As we left Lance’s parents’ house we had trouble due to the steepness, curve and gravel at the end of their drive. We started slipping backwards, with the trailer turning towards the drop-off in the woods instead of the curve of their driveway. (Their driveway is very like the “roads” here at TMM – actually their driveway is a lot nicer but just as steep.) Lance was stuck with his foot on the break so the trailer wouldn’t go further over the edge and down into the woods. We heard his dad start to head down on their 4-wheeler to see what was wrong, so I figured this was a good time to take the boys back up to the house to eat breakfast, rather than on the road as we had planned. As I finished washing our breakfast dishes, Lance’s mom came back up to the house to tell us we were out of the woods (literally) and ready to go again. As we started out I told Lance there must be a reason God didn’t allow us to get on the road an hour earlier. Mentally I told myself to take the day as it came so I would be flexible (i.e. not grumpy and destroy my family’s mood) if things didn’t go they way I had planned. Sheesh. Good thing!
A few hours into the trip Lance started to feel a vibration in the car. He pulled into a rest area to check it out, assuming it was the trailer. He couldn’t find anything majorly wrong, nor did his dad have any idea when we called him, so we got back on the road. I told him God was Sovereign and we don’t know what we didn’t know so we would just have to trust Him to keep us safe and get us there. About 12 minutes later the vehicle started swerving like it was on ice. I had no idea what was going on so just started praying out loud. It lasted long enough that I had time to pray at least 4 sentences that God would keep us safe, and keep us from flipping over. Once we stopped, Lance got out to see what had happened while I reassured the kids and got my bearings enough to notice that we were in the median. When he got back in the car I asked him if we had lost a trailer wheel, meaning the tread off the tire. He said, “No – go look at it.” Unbelievably – we had actually lost a car wheel! The whole thing. All gone. No wonder we were swerving. Needless to say, the rest of the trip did not go as planned. We just had new tires put on the car before we left and did not know that you need to tighten the lug nuts after about 100 miles if you have aluminum rims because they tend to come loose. Very important – now we know.
God, however, was so gracious. He allowed Lance to stay calm, not hit the break and steer the car perfectly to keep the trailer behind us when we went out of control, so we didn’t jack-knife and flip. There were no other cars around as we were swerving across both lanes (I couldn’t help but think of our hour delay that morning) and He stopped us about 2 inches from the berm of on-coming traffic. A trucker who stopped said he saw it happening and didn’t know how we were still alive. We were able to tell a lot of people that day it was God who had kept us safe.
The boys ate lunch while we watched the state police direct traffic and all the flashing lights. Then, after we told the paramedics we were fine and the police the story, we were towed (and drove by random people) to the nearest town and mechanic where I spent 6 hours entertaining the boys in a dusty side room and surrounding dirt paths while Lance sorted out all the issues and they worked on the car. After they got the car drivable again we drove a few hours to the next big town so we could get the right tires put on the car (instead of the wrong ones from a junk yard just to get us on the road.) The only place still open couldn’t work us in so we ate supper and found a place to stay for the night.
There were so many ways God provided for us through the people we met and how they helped us or the information they gave us during the days it took us to get to NC. However, this post is becoming a book so I’ll quickly sum up the rest of the trip. Friday took most of the day to properly fix both the car and trailer. When we got back on the road in the afternoon the car started overheating so that we could barely pull the hills with the trailer in the heat. We were able to call ahead to various mechanics (I was never so thankful for a smart phone!) who gave us lots of information but we couldn’t find one who could see us. We made it to Ashville and found another hotel for the night, which was less than a mile from a mechanic shop. (Note: see title of post) Saturday, Lance found someone who would look at the car that morning so he ran over there while I took care of the boys and our stuff.
Meanwhile, I just have to quickly mention that, this whole trip, we’ve had a freezer full of food for the year in our trailer and numerous thermal bags with our refrigerated stuff. (It was going to be a one-day trip, remember?) At each hotel we were able to plug our freezer in for the night and switch out the ice in all the thermal bags at night and in the morning. We lost NOTHING! Not even the lunchmeat. Some blueberries may have suffered some damage from being smashed with ice, but not most of them. (Again, note the title)
Ok – back to this really long story. The mechanic did indeed find the leak in the cooling system but it was a very specific part and would take a few days to order in. Since we didn’t have a few days we got back on the road around 11. We had to take some of the hills at about 25-30 mph so as not to overheat the engine – but we did eventually make it to TMM at about 4:00 that Saturday with a few hours to unpack and find what we needed before dark. Paul and Betty Lou Teasdale (the founders) had us to their house for supper and offered to let us stay for the night since we were in so late, but, as we had found our bedding, we stayed at the cabin so we could be up and unpacking right away in the morning.
Definitely NOT the trip we had planned – but God was with us through it all and provided what we needed when we needed it. Rob Dunn, our former mission’s pastor, has often told us there are 3 rules for being a missionary: 1. Be flexible! 2. Be flexible! 3. Be flexible! We thought our training would start once we got to TMM but apparently God had planned for it to start sooner.
Thank you all for your continued prayers,
Ruth, for our family
