Thurs. Jan. 22nd

BEFORE YOU READ TODAY'S BLOG...SCROLL DOWN AND READ JAN. 20 AND 21?

Well……I wish I would have stepped in dog poop instead…..don’t worry, you’ll understand by the end of this. This morning Brandon , Oriana and Chastity decided they would “man” the literature table that the congregation sets up once a week at Manuel Antonio beach. The rest of us along with Ana were going to be working door to door, but first I had to drive(I’m the only one legally allowed to drive the car, we would have had to pay extra for other drivers) Brandon and the girls down to the beach with the table and literature. I parked on the street, quickly unloaded the table and literature and then as I was about to leave they remembered that they had to get the lunch out of the back of the car. So Brandon and I run to the car, I jump in to pull it up so that we can open the back door and after I put it in “park” I bailed out…..it was in REVERSE not PARK! Brandon yells “the car’s rolling” and starts trying to push against the door to stop the car. I go to jump back in the car but before I could hit the brake….BAMMMMM!!!!! I jump out and within seconds there were about 10 locals all yelling stuff in Spanish and one guy bent over holding his back and leg, yelling something in Spanish. I’m terrified, ‘the car must have hit him’!! Then an English speaking guy comes running over and tells me that he saw the whole thing and that “that guy didn’t get hit, he’s faking”. I asked if I could use him as a witness and he agreed and wrote down his information. I looked at the “hurt” man, and shook my head at him and said..”NO!” He backed down pretty quick and said “ok….ok” and then took off. The car I backed into had a big dent in the hood and had been shoved back into some other mans little cart, but thankfully it didn’t even scratch our car because it has a spare tire on the back which took the hit. They both were talking to me in Spanish. I didn’t know what to do but go find a phone and call the insurance company, the rental company, and the police. A nice girl named Lydsey came up and started translating for me what the two men were wanting. She said the man with the car would take $200 cash and the man with the little cart wanted $30 to fix his bent wheel. Being that I have like a $1000 deductible with my insurance I decided that was my best choice. I drove back to the house, got the money, and paid the guys. I was so depressed at this point that I just wanted to go home and call it a day but the other sisters were still waiting on me downtown to pick them up and I was already 45 minutes late. I decided that the only thing that would make this day any better was to go out in the ministry. That I did. We had a great day in service. I was able to talk to an older man from Iowa for quite awhile. There was really no interest, but at least I was able to have a nice conversation. We stopped service at 3pm and went home. I was so drained, my neck was sore from all the stress earlier in the day and so I decided I was taking a nap. At 6pm, we had our weekly family study and read a portion out of the 2009 yearbook, tryed to memorize some new scriptures for the field ministry, and then practiced our Spanish. When we were done we went outside and were talking to our next door neighbor from Wisconsin. He, his wife and son are also here for 2 months to serve with the English congregation. While we were talking, brother Dave Barnett came driving up. Dave is staying in the other side of the bamboo house with the brother from Wisconsin. He is originally from Los Angeles, but moved here with his wife as missionarys. They were asked to go into the circuit work and are now serving one of the Spanish circuits outside of San Jose. He is here with his wife and mother who is visiting from the states. They are taking a week vacation. Anyhow, when he pulled up we saw smoke coming out of his hood. Riding with him in the car was a local mechanic. I guess the story is that earlier in the day his car started to overheat. He figured it was the water pump. He got this guys phone number and had gone to pick him up so that they could drive the car around to see if it would overheat again. It did and now they were stuck back here at the house with no way to get the car back to the mechanics shop across town. I told Dave I would be glad to help. The mechanic had a tow rope back at his shop so the three of us jumped in our car, went and got the rope and drove back here. Now I had to tow this car from our house here in Manuel Antonio DOWN the mountain to the other side of Quepos. I was soooooo nervous because it is so hilly and the people here drive like maniacs and it was a really short tow rope. As we started down our VERY STEEP driveway, I was sure they were going to slam into the back of our car because they couldn’t run the car so he didn’t have any power brakes. Thankfully we had brought our walkie talkie’s with us on this trip and they really came in handy because we were able to communicate while towing the car. When we finally got to the shop, Dave and I got out and pushed while the mechanic steered it back into his shop but while we were pushing it back Dave stepped in the drainage ditch that runs between the street and the houses……no it’s not a rain water runoff…it’s the sewer! Dave said….”Oh no, I’m sure that’s not good” and it splashed all over my leg and flipflops. On the ride back home, Dave was telling me all about how he wasn’t worried about the car, that Jehovah always provides. He was just thankful that it didn’t break down up in the mountains in the middle of no where when he was headed here a couple of days ago and that at least it broke down at the house were he could get a tow by me. So anyhow, when I walked into the house, I had taken my flip flops off and was hopping across the tile floor to get to the bathroom to clean up and telling everyone what had happened….then Brandon just started laughing and says…..you should start today’s blog out ….”I wish I would have stepped in dog poop instead”. Oh well, it could have been a worse day I’m sure.