Stranded...

Through the years we have had our bits of car problems, and I think just about everybody has. Sometimes it may be because of something stupid, such is driving on a empty tank, and the worst is losing a engine or transmission in the middle of no where! That has happened to us, more than once. Because we love to drive and we push our vechiles to the limits sometimes, like passing people going up a steep mountain like Parley's, in Utah and losing our transmission on the way, so stupid! Or taking the risk driving with a engine light on, and ignoring it. What ever the reason, it has happened to us, and it sucks when it does. There has been that rare occausion, where we had minutes on our cell phone, it was not out of range, and we had AAA to bail us out. One particular time where I was extremely grateful was when we had to rely on the kindness of strangers.

We lived in St. George at the time, about six hours away from South Jordan, Utah, when we took our old used van to go visit my in-laws for a few days. We left on a Sunday and missed church because of it, and we hadn't planned on breaking down on the way. We had our large white husky mixed dog with us, named Lightening, he took up his own seat, when he rode with us. We couldn't leave him down in the deseret heat for days. So we went, and on the way there, without warning, we lost the engine when we were between towns. (if you ever took that drive, you would know that there are plenty of vast land between towns) We didn't have a cell phone with us, and it was too hot to stay in the van. We didn't even have any extra water either. So we decided, let's try to walk to the next town. We said a prayer and we began walking, away from the road, in tall weeds going north. We figured we had a hour or so of sun left and possibly we would get somewhere before long, but there wasn't any building in sight, either way!

As we walked (this must of been a pathetic sight to see), we had walked for only like 15 mins. at the most, when suddenly a small compact car stopped and honked at us. In the car, was two old ladies, who were sisters and they told us to jump on in, without even discussing our sitiution. The dog too? I thought, and top of everything else, in the back seat where two large coin filled water cooler containers that took up a bunch of space. They tried to stuff it in the trunk, but they would not fit. So Jason and all four kids stuffed themselves in back seat with the coins. As for me, I sat in the front area, sharing a seat with the lady, and the dog on both of our laps! To make everything worse, he was really panting, because he was hot and he weighed a lot! The ladies were as nice as can be, they were on the way home from Vegas, going to Park City, and they stopped because we had a dog! Usually people thought he was a wolf when they saw him, bright white fur with his pale blue eyes, when he stared at you, they looked mean. But he wasn't, he was just a big furry baby.

We were extremely grateful to the ladies, they drove us to the nearest town, and since this was still so far away from where we were going, they did something even nicer. They bought drinks for us, and offered to take us the rest of the way! Jason and Erick stayed behind though, so they could wait until help could come get our van. Luck was on our side, because Jason's brother owned a repair shop. We never heard or seen the ladies again after they dropped us off at my in-laws house, I even offered to pay them for gas. But I feel like the Lord did indeed answer our prayer and ever since then, I have felt compelled to stop and offer help to others when they are on the side of the road broke down too.