Haley Grace, Honduras, And Points In Between

Yesterday Marc preached at our former church in Antioch. As usual, he did a splendid job. After church, we ate lunch and took a nap. I visited with friends, washed some clothes, and began to get things ready to leave this morning. I never even thought about the television. I walked through the room a couple of times and saw the score of the Niners game and later the Cowboys game. I guess Marc paid attention to the games and not much else.

We left Antioch at 4:45 this morning. It was not bumper to bumper traffic yet, but we certainly were not the only people on the road at that hour either. I continue to be amazed by the traffic out there and decided I would take Tegucigalpa traffic any day. By some amazing feat, we were across the Bay Bridge, bought gas, returned the rental car, rode the train to the terminal, checked in, shuffled things out of our checked luggage to meet that 50 pound maximum weight limit and were sitting at our gate at 6:40. Amazing by California standards.

We have been on vacation and we knew nothing of what has been happening anywhere, except for the football scores. We were shocked to find out Atlanta has been receiving historic amounts of rainfall. Many roads are closed. Most schools are closed. Rivers are rising. Rapidly. We were expected at friends' house tonight.

When we turned our phone on, we had two messages. One was from Nicole. Haley Grace had her two month checkup today. She now weighs 13 pounds, 6 ounces and is 24 inches long. Wow. She is getting so big, so fast.

The second message was from Marc's mother saying she had heard the ousted president of Honduras was back in the country. We were shocked. Marc texted Karen and she called. He then began to try to call everyone he could that might have some information. We know very little. Karen received calls from all the kids' schools that school was being dsimissed early. Zelaya is in the Brazilian embassy. There is a curfew tonight and probably will be all day tomorrow. I am only speculating that the airport will be shut down for a few days. We hope to know more about this situation soon. Of course, we are in prayer about this.

After we rode a train to the baggage claim, walked a mile looking for the right bus, and rode the bus to where our car was parked, we thought we would soon be on our way to our friends' home.
We unlocked the car anticipating a small snack before heading north. Airlines do not feed you and it is a long way from San Francisco to Atlanta. There was water in the floor on the passenger side of the front seat. And the seat was wet. And the ceiling was wet. Just on my side. I decided to ride in the back seat. The windshield was wet, also. On the inside. The only thing that was wet in the back seat was our atlas. It was soaked. I moved a few things so that I could sit in the back seat and discovered that seat was full of ants. I still opted for the back seat than the soaked front seat.

Even though every thing was shut, we determined the sun roof leaked. We would have been ok for the evening with a wet interior. Marc turned on the car and several warning lights came on. The car was only going about 3 miles per hour. Marc fished the owner's manual out of the glove box and handed it to me to see what the warning lights were. One of the lights was a reduced power light. Duh! No one really had to tell us we had reduced power. The car was just barely going.

After several miles, we stopped for that little snack. Bad idea. If possible, the car was going even slower than it had before and we were in the worse part of Atlanta. Thank goodness it was still daylight. Marc kept going. I was praying, and I am sure he was too, that we didn't get killed. That prayer was obviously answered.

At times, the car would go faster and at times it would not. We finally found a place that could look at the car at 7:00 at night. I was beginning to wish I had eaten a second donut at Betty and Bob's this morning. I guess it would not have made much difference by that time of day any way.

The shop did a diagnostic on the car and thought they had fixed the problem. The mechanic drove it around the block and said all was well. We paid and left. We drove one block and the same thing happened again. We crept back to the shop. We callled our friends and told them we were not going to make it tonight. We called a cab and began to unload our car. We waited for fifty minutes before the cab came. He took us down the street to a Howard Johnson. The desk clerk upgraded us to the room closest to the wi-fi. We walked next door to Waffle House to eat.
With holding patterns and all to get to Atlanta from San Francisco took about four and a half hours. To get from the Atlanta airport to the Howard Johnson in Duluth took over 5 hours.

That chicken sandwich sure tasted good.

Our stomachs are full, we have a warm bed in which to sleep and we are safe. We have much to be thankful for.

Terri