To be fair, I didn’t mean to put our lives at risk when I asked the Lord to somehow get my brain awake after a long day of being jet-lagged at ministry (remember that post that I wrote at 4am? 4 hours of sleep just doesn’t cut it for the World Race lifestyle!). God has been showing me lately just how utterly faithful He is, and sometimes He does that by answering even my most nonchalant prayers in the most unexpected ways.
It all started on Wednesday afternoon after we finished up our work for the day with the men at the rehabilitation home. We have adopted many new life mottos since starting the World Race, and perhaps the most useful one has been “Hurry up and wait.” So when are our ministry contact promised he’d be there ‘very soon’ to take us home in the 33-year-old van that has been our primary mode of transportation this month, we got ourselves ready to leave and got ready to do some waiting. In true Cassady-fashion, I fell asleep almost immediately on the hard table with mosquitos swarming around me, and I slept hard. So when my team woke me up about two hours later to head back to the house, I was lethargic to say the least.
As ‘Zick-Nack’ (our affectionate collective nickname for the boys of Team Awaken, Nick and Zach) hopped on the motorbike that our host is lending them this month, the girls piled into the van and thanked the staff member who offered to be our driver for the evening. About this time I sent up a sleepy prayer asking the Lord to do something that would wake me up by the time we got back to the house, because I was planning to lead a Bible study for my team that evening…hardly thinking that He would pay much attention to such a silly prayer even as my eyes were still drooping shut. Little did I know that approximately 30 seconds later we would find ourselves understanding an entirely new level of “I watched my life flash before my eyes.”
Apparently the old van had just been given a brand new gearbox that was all about getting stuck in the wrong gear and not at all about shifting into the right gear. Which is a pretty scary thing in and of itself, until you find yourself rolling backwards in the middle of an uphill Indian traffic jam…and then it just becomes downright terrifying. With horns blaring and people shouting and a new prayer of “Lord, please just get us home in one piece” on my lips, the girls with easiest access to doors jumped into action. Literally. We jumped out of the car (our driver had slammed on the brakes at this point, so thankfully we were no longer rolling backward) and we began to push the van up the hill. In the middle of traffic. In INDIA. When we finally got rolling again, the driver threw it into fourth gear and didn’t bother to even try and shift gears again…so we literally flew through the backroads of Bangalore for the rest of the way home. When we jolted to stop at the house, everyone breathed a sigh of relief when our feet touched solid ground once more…until Karissa saw a giant rat scurry past her feet and we all screamed some more!
That, my friends, is a night on the World Race AKA an adrenaline rush from Jesus in response to one näive girl’s prayer for some supernatural awakening. As the old adage goes, be careful what you wish [pray] for!
With love and wanderlust,
Cassady
Photo credits go to the lovely Eva Cranford!
**PS- sorry about the double-sending of this update notification! Sometimes with spotty internet you accidentally do things without even realizing that your computer is connected to the internet!
