Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Car Trip (07/18/05)
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TITLE: Road Trip | Previous Challenge Entry
By L.M. Lee
07/23/05 -
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What mothers won’t do for their babies!
#1
Catch a flight into Phoenix because Flagstaff is snowed in. Grab a roadmap. Rent a car. Enter the Phoenix city tunnel…and 200 feet into it, you can’t see because there has been a wreck, filling the tunnel with smoke and the emergency vehicles are blaring sirens behind you! Where do you pull off?
Three hours later, after steadily climbing to an altitude of 6,100 feet in pitch black, you learn your family member has been miraculous healed!
Rejoicing the next day you drive down the mountain to discover the night before you had been hugging the edge of a cliff. And that fog…wasn’t fog…it was clouds!
#2
Two weeks before the Senior Scramble we lose our youth pastor and his mini-van!
Solution: We “volunteer” a youth mom and her mini-van.
Two moms: one mini-van loaded with 8 hyper-high school seniors and one compact dragging its undercarriage from 5 girl’s weekend luggage!
Got it?
Now put 2 moms, 4 states away from home, 5:00 p.m. Friday evening traffic, downtown Atlanta! We missed the loop!
Have you ever come into Atlanta on I-85? First it’s an innocent 4 lanes. You go up a rise and descend into 6-lanes…which melt effortlessly into 8 …merging into 10. And such unity…everyone is going 75 mph.
When I say we pulled off the interstate on the other side of Atlanta, and kissed the ground…my kids still won’t acknowledge me!
# 3
If you are a youth leader – NEVER – EVER – and I mean NEVER – listen to anyone that says, “Oh, a faxed copy of your birth certificate is fine!”
Just kill them now. A life-sentence for a crime of passion is less painful than border guards and a bus of teens in August.
My daughter had gone to Mexico to serve as a summer missionary. She road down with the host family. She was to return with the youth group.
At the border, the bus was not permitted to enter the country because of ONE…do you hear me ONE kid who had a “faxed” copy of their birth certificate.
Now if I had been on the bus…ONE kid would have been on a bus home. Period! But “youthful” youth pastor thought he could convince Mexico otherwise. DUMB!
Ever been with 30 teens in a new place, for 1 week without an itinerary? If you’ve haven’t…well let’s just say there are some things you should experience for yourself!
I had to drive the 19 hours to Mexico to meet the missionaries who drove 22 hours to American. Miraculously, without cell phones…we connected!
#4
Christmas and my son’s Army base was closed.
“So, mom, can you come get me?”
“Sure! We’ll leave as soon as I get off work.”
12 hours later we arrive blurry eyed.
When we arrived on base, they couldn’t locate my son. They can precision bomb, but they can’t locate my son…amazing!
We spotted each other - Kodak moment!
Drive home.
We pull into a rest area…to “rest” our bladders. When I come back to the car, my daughter is talking to a strange woman. The woman needed a ride home and my daughter, full of the Christmas spirit, offered us.
The woman had been busy “servicing” truck drivers.
Well…now what?
How do you explain to your daughter that it might not be such a good thing to show Christian kindness on Christmas Eve to a total stranger who might be a future Mary Magdalene?
You don’t.
You offer the front seat, tuck the kids in the back and pray!
Two hours later we were back on the interstate headed for home. “Maggie’s” home was sleazy motel an hour from the rest stop.
Now I’d like to tell you this was one of those great preacher airplane stories…but it’s not. I had to explain 90% of what she talked about to my daughter in delicate terms hoping to keep her innocence while my son just rolled his eyes and laughed!
But we arrived home safe and had one of the best Christmas’ ever!
Just last night my daughter got on the phone with her best friend and planned a road trip to Nashville. Hope they have a great time…I’m renting videos and listening to the rain on the roof!
727 words
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