God has many ways to remind us of His care. This week I was once again reminded of how much I was thankful for His care and that I need not fear--He's "got this"! He had the past, He has today, He will have the future in His hands!
My reminder came to me in the form of a picture on Face book especially for my family from other people in our family. The picture that got my attention was a picture of a mountain. I could tell it wasn't just any mountain and I searched my memories to see if I could figure out which mountain that I "knew" it could be. It turned out that my guess was correct, that it was a picture of Mt. Rainier in the state of Washington. Immediately my thoughts turned to a time six years ago and the memories we had made of our experience with the same mountain.
This story began on a July day in 2017. We had driven to the national park entrance and just inside the park entrance was a campground. One of my fond childhood memories was of multiple camping trips with my family and camping in some of our country's national parks. Back then, it was not hard to camp in them. There were always open places and no reservations required back so many years ago. That is not the case today however. So, that day, as we entered Mt. Rainier National Park, we saw that there was room for us to camp in the National Park!!! I was a very happy girl! I was looking forward to the whole national park campground experience!
Because mountains are always better early in the day, we decided to just park our camper in the campsite and use the rest of the day for our mountain experience. We would set up camp later!!! And off we went to properly enjoy the Mountain! We discovered that you have to travel through the little town of Faith to get to the mountain town of Paradise! That was kind of interesting to us. As we neared the top of the mountain, we began to detect noises coming from our van that did not seem to be normal. Then it began to lose power. Stuck on a mountain with a car that has mechanical issues is not in my comfort zone! Needless to say, we headed back down the mountain without our mountain fun day!
The trip down had us watching for the first available place for a mechanic to help us out. There was a great lack for that service we found out.
Eventually we made it all the way back to the town of Morton, WA, west of Rainier Nat. Park. But too late for any mechanic to be available. We decided to camp for the night. Which meant sleeping in the van since our camper was still camping all by itself back in the park campground! Without me!
My face book note for the day was--
July 27, 2017 Can't say that spending the night trying to sleep in our car seats and then being told we couldn't get repair services for a month is not the preferred vacation experience but we are being helped by a good Samaritan. Thank God for kind people.
The short story of the long story is that there was no way we would be able to get our van fixed for at least a month, maybe more unless we drove an ailing van another 75 miles to a much larger town. Not even a Ford dealer would help even though we were waiting for him to open up the next morning. So we went to NAPA and they helped us out by having their computer reader tell us what was wrong. They could sell us parts but that did not help us get back on the road. So, we sat in the car and thought and thought and puzzled and wondered! It was then that God took over. For some reason, we had neglected to use the best solution to a problem there is. We had forgotten to pray in the midst of our problem solving! I guess we needed a BIG lesson. At any rate, I was pretty close to tears when a man came walking by-- walking on the sidewalk past our car. He stopped to make a comment about where we were from, saw my near tears and asked what was wrong. We then told him our sad story about how the town wasn't being very accommodating for us. It was then that he said to drive around the corner and up the alley to a garage. His mechanic would fix us up!!!!!!!
God sends guardian angels in the form of good Samaritans who sometimes look like greasy mechanics who were "conveniently" standing around with nothing to do while waiting for one of their own buses to come in. They put us back on the road in seemingly no time at all. We asked how much we owed, maybe at least a pizza for them! The only thing we could do for them was a couple cups of coffee! The "Angel's" name was "White Pass Coalition /Lewis Mt hwy Transit --they are our guardian angels today. So thankful for them." Face book entry July 27, 2017
When we started that day, we never could have anticipated how it would end--How God provides when we don't even ask. How He has a way out of our trouble, if we allow it to happen. No matter how dismal the situation seems, there is a way out. We need to open our minds and our hearts to let Him come in. He is the “Ultimate fix our problems Mechanic”. He doesn't ask for much from us--just our patience while He shows us that we can depend on Him. And then step back and watch what He can do!
