Some days I’m pretty sure my life is a movie…
The other day we were travelling from Sofia, Bulgaria to another small town to meet with one of the teams. When we spoke they told me that we get on a bus and tell them to stop at Palmite even though the bus is designated to go to a place 30 minutes away called Taranova. So we are under the assumption that maybe the bus will stop in Palmite or we can just ask for it to stop in the town to let us off. We ask the bus driver if he knows where it is before we enter the bus…of course not, that’d be too easy.
We start the travelling and begin to realize that we should be getting close to Palmite so we call the team and now receive instruction that this much hyped and eagerly anticipated “Palmite” is actually just an intersection in the middle of nowhere. Sweet…
As we begin to look out of the windows, sure enough, we see Logan and his contact at this intersection trying to flag down a bus travelling at 80-100 kph. It was somewhat comical, but also disturbing because we knew that this contact wanted us to get off there. Logan proceeds to call us multiple times as his contact is saying, “Tell them to stop the bus, they are used to it…tell them to stop the bus”
As Lauren goes to the front to ask one of the bus employees she says, “Yes we will stop in ten minutes” Keep in mind this is the equivalent of a charter bus in the United States, not just some city bus. Based on previous trips and many bus rides we understand that they typically only stop once they reach a destination or for a pre-determined stop. With all of this in mind we were more than okay with another short 10 minute ride…one problem, our contact was NOT. After we relayed this information that it would stop in ten minutes he continued to tell us to just tell them to stop right there, “they HAD to do it”…well obviously they didn’t, until James Bond took matters into his own hands. (I should offer the fact that this contact is a really a great guy and a man of God who continued to amaze me day after day as we worked alongside one another in his pursuit of the Lord and what the Lord is doing.)
On the other side of the coin, Lauren and I were mortified…everyone on the bus knew this was for the two Americans and all eyes shifted to the back of the bus as we avoided eye contact with everyone, nervously laughed and gathered all of our things in a panic to get off the bus…I will add that I left my lovely new cell phone on this bus during all the hoopla…ehhh you win some you lose some right??
We eventually get off the bus, get all of our things from under the bus and spent the next 15 minutes recreating the event from everyone’s perspectives and laughing the entire ride home. Yet another adventure on the World Race…I love this stuff.
