what a day!

Friday morning we left the house with a very busy list of things that needed to be done in the day - take my car to the shop - again, import the trailer including doing paperwork with a lawyer and going through customs paperwork, and driving to Nicaragua to the city of Leon. Quite a bit for one day. While we're gone Sigel is staying with Mandy and Santos and Jorge are watching our house.

After dropping off my car, the lawyer wasn't ready for us yet and told us to wait along the side of a specific road until she called - while waiting there, with the windows partly down, we were scared to death by 3 men with 2 pistols coming along the side of the truck on both our windows sticking the guns to our heads - I don't think I can really explain how scary it was to have a man put a gun to your head. There were 2 guys at Tristan's window and they started asking him for stuff while the other man was talking to me and trying to get stuff from me. I don't know how it happened without us getting hurt - but Tristan started shouting "salganse" - "leave" and turned on the truck, rolled up the windows and the men got off the sides of our truck and walked away while we took off in the other direction - they didn't fight us - they could have killed us and didn't put up a fight at all while Tristan was starting the truck and all that. The only thing they took was a pocket knife of Tristan's - this is amazing because we had about $2,000 cash on us because we were waiting to pay the customs and the lawyer and go out of the country for 3 days so we needed money. Plus we had the computer with us because we were leaving. I really truly believe that the only reason we're ok and nothing happened was the grace and protection of God - 3 men with gun had no reason to back away when Tristan told them to leave except that God is bigger than them and put the fear of Him in them. This is a complete and total testimony of the faithfulness of God and how he can protect us even when the odds are against us. I was pretty hysterical afterwards as you can imagine and it all seemed pretty surreal afterwards - although it was probably only 20 seconds - it's amazing what 20 seconds can do to ya.

After that experience we waited for the lawyer at a restaurant until we could take care of the trailer - found out we have to pay 27%taxes on the trailer to bring it in to Honduras - ouch! we left for the Nicaragua by 12:30 arriving at the border by 3:30 - borders are always very stressful as there are money changers and men trying to 'help' you (for a fee) do your paperwork for you and they're all trying to get a little extra - they kept insisting that we had to pay a $42 and a $25 fees - we said that was fine but show us on paper why we have to pay it - they backed down and we didn't have to pay hardly anything so maybe we have learned something from all our border crossings. The drive in Nicaragua was beautiful and peaceful - the roads are much better than Honduras - they are flat and straight without too many potholes so that was nice. We got into Leon and had found a restaurant from our travel book that we wanted to try - found out the the map in the travel book for this town is completely wrong but we did finally find a restaurant and it was good. After dinner we made it to El Ayudante Nicaragua (www.nicamissions.com) where we are staying for the few days and learning about what they are doing - getting ideas on how to run ministries and such. It's been a really good time of being with the director and seeing all they've been doing.

Saturday we met with the director and he showed us around - in the afternoon we wandered Leon - toured the biggest cathedral in Latin America (so they say), went to the Art Museum, and ate dinner. We read and relaxed. It was a nice day.

Sunday - today - going to leave the ministry in a few hours and head to the border - praying for an easy day of driving with no issues getting the paperwork we need for the truck at the border. Goal is to be home tonight. Although the border could cause us trouble and we'd have to stay in Nicaragua one more night.