The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:

He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

            So they said to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

-       John 6:30-35

 

 

 

How often do we get those signs we ask for?

 

How often do we scream out, “God just SHOW me you’re there.”

 

…maybe i’m only speaking for myself, but at least the urge to do so comes quite frequently…

 

 

Tuesday morning Jerome, John, Uncle Harris, and myself set out for the new Mission being built in Grand Bassa. From our compound in BlackTom Town, the new site is roughly 110 miles away….the trip however, is never shorter than 4 hours…The roads are somewhat less than stellar and are made up of more potholes and bumps than you can imagine (we also caught some air a few times haha). Let’s just say John was unable to go 3 minutes without saying “OW CHIGLAGA!”

buying some bananas on the road

The trip is long, but always so worth it. i don’t know what it is about the place, but the times i’ve been there, i’ve felt eerily at home. The land is gorgeous, and the site of the mission under construction is a lot more secluded that the one i’m staying at in BlackTom Town. You really are in the African “Bush”.

sitting in the kitchen looking out into the land the new site has

Well the trip went smoothly. We met with the people we had to meet with. We also got to just walk around and take in the beauty of it all.

 

… We embarked on the journey home, and it seemed like we were just in for our normal long, bumpy ride.  As soon as we got out of Grand Bassa County though, The clutch system on our truck died. We pulled over to the side of the road, turned off the pick-up and prayed it would magically work when we turned it back on…No such luck…

We were stuck…over 2 hours away from the compound.

haha there we are. Right on the Margibi / Grand Bassa Border...Uncle Harris is still trying to find someone to come get us.

John and i decided to take advantage of what seemed more and more like our campground for the night – checking out how the river looked for swimming Haha. We were all just hanging around the road…well Jerome and Harris were searching through their phones looking for ANYONE they knew who might have a car or know someone who had a car and could come get us…No such luck again…Jerome called Clarissa, and she called Toyota to see if they could come tow us. Clarissa called back and told us they could, but it would be 6 the next morning before they got there…haha and that was on a Liberian watch, so it was looking like noon before we’d see anyone.

 

John and i were making bets on if i could hit different trees with rocks, Harris was pacing the road, and Jerome was saying to Clarissa, “I have no idea what we can do.”…And then one of those signs we always pray for showed up.

 

i was a little further down the road than the others, and this UN car passed me - i smiled and waved – he returned the favor…and then some.  He pulled over and asked us what was going on. We told him our truck was dead and we would be here for the night. He asked us where we lived because he was heading to Monrovia (our mission just so happens to be on the way to Monrovia).

John, our guardian angel and Uncle Harris hooking up the pick-up to be towed.

So this angel, John, as he called himself, just happened to have some things to tow our car a little way. He towed our car about 5 miles to a gas station (which was coincidently called “It takes two filling station” and motto just happened to be “Never Despair”) where we could leave the car so no one would steal it or strip it for parts.

Leaving the pick-up at the "IT Takes Two" filling station..haha motto: Never Despair.

 

We hopped in the UN truck with John, and headed towards the mission. Jerome and i looked at each other and simultaneously mouthed, “He was a God-send.” The further we got along the ride though, the more coincidences came out. John had just come from right up the road from where our new site was. He just so happened to be going to Monrovia. He and Jerome started talking in Spanish and He also happened to be Nicaraguan, one of the countries that borders Honduras (our mission is under Mission Honduras Inc. and the Mission sites in Honduras have more than a few kids from Nicaragua) when there are relatively hardly any Latin American UN representatives in Liberia right now.

 

We arrived home and hugged John. We thanked him more than a few times. We tried to get him to stay and hang out for a little while but he had to get ready to catch his flight he had in the morning.

 

The rest of the night, all we could think about, was how miraculous John’s showing up was and how perfectly it played out - How if we had left Grand Bassa just a little later than we did we would have still been sitting in the truck.

 

All we could think about was how Mighty to Save our God is.

 

Today i have a prayer of thanksgiving for our Nicaraguan Angel, Johnny Mua.

i pray that we might find the courage to trust in God completely – to trust that He will never abandon us – to trust that He is always by our side – To trust that He always has us right where we need to be.

Please pray for wisdom, courage, guidance, understanding, compassion, generosity, and Love…for all of us!

 

Hope all is well!

 

 

 

Life, Love, and Peace

 

uncle matthew