If I Don't Praise Him...

“If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:40)

I just want to share this with you so that you can praise God with me for His goodness and mercy.

What a morning I had this past Wednesday!  It started with some exercise in the yard (trying to encourage my older son Jeremy to do the same). After that, it was a rush trying to get breakfast ready and prepare lunch for the boys to take to school and have some for Anthony and me. You see, Wednesday is the day I go to Tsevie (che-vee-ay, a town about 45 minutes away from where we live) for language study. I felt rushed but managed to leave the house and arrived at my language teacher’s house only a few minutes late. I had decided that it would be my last session with Kate. The reasons are that I really do not like driving on my own especially with the road being bad with lots of potholes and also, with Jonathan starting pre-school and at a later time than Jeremy and finishing early, it is hard to juggle time to have everything done. I had a good session with Kate, said my goodbye and was soon on my way home.

All the time that we’ve lived in Africa, we’ve always tried to remember to ask God for traveling mercies because we have seen a few too many wrecks on the road!  I know that if it were not for His mercy, I might not be here today.

I was driving back from Kate’s, about three-fourths of the way home, and was about to pass a trailor truck that was parked on the other side of the road when I saw two more large trucks coming from the opposite direction.  When they were about 100 meters away, I saw the second truck attempting to overtake the truck in front. I was hoping that the driver of the second truck would stop overtaking when he saw my vehicle but to my dismay, he kept on coming. I realized that there will not be space on the 2 lane road (with a parked truck on the other side) so I tried to go as close to the edge of the road as possible.  He overtook the truck in front but because of the parked truck on his side of the road he cut into my side of the road and “squeezed” in between the parked truck and my vehicle, almost pushing me off the road. I saw my side mirror being pushed in and then heard the sound of scraping metal. By then we had both stopped. I was scared, but I was more upset than anything at the driver for his reckless driving. Praise the Lord that I was unharmed and the vehicle had only some scratches. Since it would be too time consuming to try to make a police report, and seeing that there wasn’t much damage done, I went on my way.

As if that incident weren’t enough, when I reached Tabligbo, and as I turned into our road, I got stuck in the mud. The rain over the past few days has made mud of the newly graded road. Anyway, with help from some people who were on the road, I was able to get out of the mud and drove on to the school to pick up Jonathan.  I had called Anthony and he soon joined me at the school after having walked most of the way before catching a motorcycle taxi.  It was such a relief to see him and to be back safe and sound. May God bless our going out and coming in. Praise Him.