Day 79 – Getting home to Mexico City

As you know, on Friday we drove across the border and halfway to Mexico City.  On Saturday … well, I drove over something.

I couldn’t avoid it, really.  There was a wall on one side, a truck on the other, and … well, it looked like a piece of wood with a nail in it.

Everything seemed all right.  We arrived in San Juan del Río to meet a fellow missionary and pass on some things we were bringing from Dallas.  He greeted us by telling us we had a flat tire.

The first blessing here was that the tire was actually in the process of becoming flat.  It didn’t blow up, or become instantly flat.  So it doesn’t look like we did any permanent damage to anything (except the tire).

The missionary we met was Jonathan Baker, who was meeting us there at McDonalds with his son Josiah.  Jonathan generously dropped everything and helped us out.  We (eventually) found a tire repair shop, and a fellow came to take a look.  No problem, except he didn’t have right size tire.

Well, this was really no problem at all.  Why?

First, Hannah and Nathanael and Josiah had a HUGE play place in the restaurant to play in while they waited.

But second – this was obviously the "tire" corner of town.

I’m telling you, within 5 minutes of this place there must have been every kind of tire place you can imagine.  You want Firestone?  Michelin?  Goodyear?  How about going to a BFGoodrich place, or Continental, or a few you’ve never heard of?  Take your pick.  It was like a tire theme park.  Not little shops either – big, professional stores.

Big, professional stores – all closed.

That’s right, we drove and drove and stopped and stopped (Jonathan and I with Luis, the tire guy) and nothing in tireland was open.  We finally found one little shop, that didn’t have the right size tire for me, and they said good luck finding anything open today.  Or tomorrow.

To make a long story short, eventually we went back to the original tire repair shop, and they had a tire a little bigger and a little smaller than what we needed.  The smaller one was pretty close, and would do fine until we got home and had a chance to buy a proper replacement.  And this one wasn’t going to break the bank.

A couple guys replaced the tire, and we were on our way.

Our deepest thanks to Jonathan Baker, who was such a great help!  We got home around 8pm after all that, with all the more to praise the Lord for.

So MUCH to praise the Lord for – 79 days after leaving – thank you Lord for countless blessings – your grace and provision!

We are home – enjoying friends and starting to unpack and starting to get things functional again.  What a summer!