Well, Fall is there where you are and winter is here where we are. We are in full swing getting our errands list attended to and our houses repaired. Chris Briles and his son came for a few days and helped us get all the lights in the kitchen changed out. We now have a brilliantly lit kitchen where the girls can do their homework, even on rainy days and even when the electrical current is extremely low. We are excited. He and Aaron did several things, like change out head lights on our car, and worked on some plumbing puzzles at our mission. One of the things that we did the day after they arrived in Honduras was to drive 5 hours away and picked up some dairy goats in our stock trailer. They didn't get the memo that this was going to be a road trip a day after their huge travel day from Texas the day before, but they were up for the trip.
I had picked them up at the airport the day before in San Pedro Sula and we got home before supper, which is saying a lot with all the stops we made buying bananas, pineapples and a run to our grocery store Nolascos. We had a great reunion with the girls. Chris had been many times, but this is the first time his son Aaron could come with him. We ate and had all the girls introduce themselves and then we went to bed because we were leaving at 5:15.
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I had to get up earlier to take the girls to the bakery, but I woke up at 1:30 a.m. I know now for certain that the watchman thinks I am nuts. I had woken up realizing that I that there was not a spare tire in the truck we were taking. I just woke up remembering that the luggage and bananas and pineapples, and groceries we picked up along the way couldn't have ALL been in the truck. I got the watchman and he helped me find the spare. Someone had taken it out. and I didn't check for the spare before the ride to San Pedro Sula, which is a 4 hour trip one way, to see if it was in the back of the truck. I am thankful God is with me when I do stuff like that. Then I remembered that our tires to the redesigned trailer were about 15 years old. I went out at about 2 in the morning, to check on that. Then I wondered if we had a spare for that stock trailer, and we had a tire, but no rim. All I could think about is that we would be aside of the road with all those goats and no spare tire. Then I got back up at about 3 in the morning because I remember we needed ropes for the goats. Then I got back up at about 3:30 a.m. because I wanted to get a 5 gallon bottle of water in case we needed water for the goats. I thought we would be traveling in the middle of the day to return home and I didn't want them to get to hot. So I got the water jug in the back of the wagon. I thought of some other things and called the watchman to call Don Elbin our farm helper to come earlier to help with what we might need. I then fell asleep for about an hour.
After dropping the girls at the bakery, I got out at about 5:30 a.m. and so I was okay with that. Our new road was great, but pulling that stock trailer was a little harder than I thought it would be. The farm helpers decided to put plywood siding on the interior because we were picking up 9 goats, which most were 6 months old, and so I didn't want a problem going down the road. However the guy who helped with the plywood used the thickest plywood that we had and it make the trailer very heavy. So I worried about that. But the first leg of our trip was uneventful, even with all my worrying about the roads, goats, tires, and etc.
We almost arrived at our destination and our trailer bolt came loose without our knowledge, and so the tongue of the trailer slowly slid out as we were following the guy on the motorcycle that was guiding us into the other agricultural ministry called Baptist Rural Life Ministries. Before we could stop the moving trailer the hitch had come undone but the chains were connecting pulling the bumper with the heavy trailer. We could have planted corn in the furrows we made in the road with our trailer hitch. We got to the mission with a quick fix for a bolt. Who knew where the bolt was and when it fell out? I hopped out of the truck and in the back seat is a bolt and hinge that connect the back of the seat to the seat of the truck. My phone was turned around in my back pocket and I heard it go "crack". My screen broke on my phone. Rats!! and double Rats! I thought it probably won't work. But I didn't have time to worry about it. The motorcycle guy rode up the road and I walked up the road for a while to see if we could find it. We thankfully were on a dirt road that had no traffic or it would have been a scary ordeal. God protected us.
We had to come back down the mountain and get the hitch repaired. The bumper was sitting very low and so we went to find a mechanic, in this tiny little town. We ended up with a guy who had an air gun, a welder, electricity and an idea on how to fix our bumper. He took it all off and just welded the hitch directly to the frame and the everlasting arms that had held the bumper on in the first place. He had to reinforce with pieces of sheet metal. I was worried about how much he was going to charge me for all that work. He only charged me 25 dollars. He told me I could haul cars if I wanted to. We left and got the goats.
We were 3 hours off our schedule and so we bought chips and drinks and took off. I worried about us being in the dark and stormy night. It has been raining hard here and there were clouds all about , but it didn't start raining until the moment we arrived home. It is always fun unloading goats in the dark while it is raining, but we didn't care because we had accomplished our mission and were safely home at PTC
I am thankful that we got home with our new dairy goats, but most of all I am thankful that God is patient with me. With all my worrying, everything worked out. God protected us all the way down the line. He had me with three men who knew how to pray and how to help. He sent me a mechanic we didn't even know we would need, that charge me a super low price. We didn't have to drive in the heat of the day with the goats, and we got home before the storm started. And my phone still works although I have a pretty starburst pattern at the top. I am so thankful for my screen protecter for holding it together. We didn't even use the water, or the ropes, or the spares. All that great worrying for nothing. I was exhausted. God tell us not to worry, but I did and I do, and there really is no reason to do so. I am a little on the spiritual learning disorder side. I wonder if I am ever going to "get it". I let the enemy "get my goat" one more time .
Thankfully God is so patient with me . I need to lean on Him more and my projected thoughts on the immediate future a whole lot less. God always surprises me how He turns my thoughts around. I pray my thoughts continue to be on how good He is to me and how He always goes before me, and underneath are His everlasting arms. Blessings, The Exhausted traveling, Goat hauling, but thankful Honduran MOM
I put some older photos of the girls, I can't believe how much they have grown!!
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