"...to keep thee in all thy ways!"

...I am so thankful that God gives His angels charge over us!Travel is a huge part of our work here, because we are located in such a far-away place.  In the dry season, distant places still seem endless but accessible.  Now that the rain is pouring down most of the time, the roads, once bulldozed and passable, now look like a combination of deep mud and canyons.  We traveled to BYT by truck on June third.  We parked that truck, not to use it again until the rain stops.  Now we walk.Our first hike out of here took 6 ½ hours.  The first 2 hours is up a single track pathway.  Sometimes you would go two steps forward and slide one step backward. Each footstep must be carefully placed.  The backpack seems much heavier when your balance is threatened.  The rain and mud is relentless.  The steepness of the ascents and descents is a constant strain on the legs and feet. The mud can take your feet out from under you with no warning at all.    Leeches seemed to think they owned our feet.  For such a slimy creature with no brain, they seem to be smart because they always dig into your skin where you cannot see them.  Sometimes I would pull 5 or 6 off my feet at one time.  One good thing about leeches is they do not carry disease as far as I know. The last 2 hours of this walk is a narrow, steep, cement road, taking us up and down mountainsides that are over a 20% grade.  We did not talk, but used the time to silently commune with God.  Finally we reached the main hwy.  A sense of relief and ecstatic joy flooded over us!  We even had a bus stop shelter to wait for the song tow out of the rain.One song tow took us to Meta, where we switched to another that would take us all the way to the school.  The woman driving it definitely drove too fast for the wet condition of the roads, but what happened next was not her fault.  I had my eyes shut and was going through my prayer list in my mind and talking to God about each one when suddenly a crash and a hard jolt caused my head to spin and wonder what had happened.  I noticed the people who were standing in the back fell forward, and a man who was sitting in the center on the opposite side from me got his elbow badly lacerated and possibly fractured from the truck who struck us while traveling in the opposite direction.  (I usually try to sit there because I like to put my arm out of the window just like that!) Blet Jaw was sitting just one person down from him.  It all happened so fast that we did not have time to distinguish the truck that hit us-- he had just kept right on driving!  Our song tow was badly dented in the center of the passenger area. The rear wheel was crooked and the tire was torn off its rim making driving impossible.  It was a miracle that more people were not harmed. The injured man got a ride to the hospital and everybody else just waited for another song tow.  Just as we were praying about our situation, a small, familiar car drove past.  It was Maria, Jordan, Beth and a sick baby they were taking back to LKY from Meta hospital.  Somehow we were able to flag them down and amazingly we all squeezed in and finished our day of travel in a total of 10½ hours.  God’s angels certainly had charge over us that day and kept us in all our ways!