While Dave and I lived with the Mwakodis, rain fell in the Taita Hills—a big blessing—but maneuvering The Pearl on roads afterward resembled driving through greased peanut butter.
Dave endured more than one anxious
moment slipping and sliding up a steep hill through deep gunk. One day he
wondered aloud, “Will we ever get to the top of this?”
Another day we got a punctured tire,
and The Pearl broke down twice.
The roads were so bad that at the end
of a long day, holding on for dear life, our bodies felt bruised.
On days like that, we had to fight
through any number of challenges. It was easy to get discouraged.
But we couldn’t give up!
What we faced those days reminds me of Hebrews
12:1 which tells us to run with perseverance and endurance the race that God
has placed before us—and never to give up.
There in the Taita Hills, if a family
didn’t own a car (and my estimation is that most didn’t), they didn’t need a
road so, in that case, Dave just pointed The Pearl in the right direction.
One day, with The Pearl chock full of people
on our way to a trainee’s host’s home, we had to drive across the steep rock
face of a hillside. To my amazement, even though The Pearl tipped at a steep
angle, it clung to the rock. The Pearl’s stability and agility astounded me.
Eventually we reached the house,
perched on a boulder-strewn peak. We dropped off our friend and then, there on
that rocky little point, Dave began to turn The Pearl around.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy because I
couldn’t see any flat ground and the land dropped off in every direction. I had
turned to speak to a fellow passenger when suddenly Dave hollered, “Everyone
sit perfectly still!”
I had never heard him yell like that.
Something was wrong.
The Pearl faced downhill at a steep
angle, toward a deep ravine, and Dave whispered to me,
“The Pearl’s about to fall off the
mountainside.”
It was as if the cords of death surrounded
us—sought to entangle us. Destruction overwhelmed us, the cords of the grave
coiled around us. But in our distress, we cried out to God for help, and He
heard us (Psalm 18:4-6).
I could hardly breathe, much less
speak, but eventually I pulled myself together enough to ask Dave if we
passengers should get out.
“No!” he yelled. “Everybody sit
perfectly still!”
He told me he would put The Pearl in
four-wheel drive. I didn’t know what that required, and maybe he didn’t either,
but again he warned us not to move.
In fact, he himself sat perfectly
still.
His face and neck glistened with sweat.
When I saw Dave petrified at the wheel,
I envisioned newspaper headlines in
Kenya
and across the United States,
“Missionaries die when vehicle plunges
off mountain.”
I felt faint. I couldn’t watch. I had
to look down.
After a tense few moments,
by God’s grace and in His power,
Dave composed himself, planned what to
do,
no doubt rehearsed in his mind
how to work the clutch,
and then he bravely took action.
Seconds later he backed The Pearl up
and away from the drop-off in front of us, stopping before it backed too far
toward the drop-off behind us.
He inched The Pearl back and forth, and
kidogo, kidogo—little by little—he turned it around.
Our mighty, compassionate God had done for
us what He did for David in Old Testament times:
He reached down from above,
pulled us away from that precarious,
pointy, mountain peak,
and He took us to a safe place.
He had made our feet, and The Pearl’s
wheels,
like a deer that does not stumble;
He helped us stand secure on that steep
mountain.
(Psalm 18:16-33)
No one said much for the rest of the
trip, and it took a long time for my heartbeat to return to normal. (From
Chapter 3, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)
How precious are the words from Psalm
121:2-3, 8:
The Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth
. . .
will not let you fall. . . .
The Lord guards you as you come and go,
now and forever.
(God’s Word Translation)
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