Miracles...Part Two

Today, even before we reached Sendafa, I was confronted with yet another miracle.

Our transportation to the village has been one van, Dr. Frew's Land Cruiser and a big bus. The Ethiopian translaters are split up between Frew's car and the van. All the foreigners (Americans and Indians) are in the big bus. We were on our way to Sendafa when we got a call from Birhanu. I didn't understand what they were saying because they were speaking in Amharic, but I could tell that something was wrong. I didn't think much of it because there is almost always a small problem that makes us late, I thought that's all it was. But this time Frew got more upset than usual and we actually pulled to the side of the road. I asked what the problem was and they told me that the bus crashed, then they said that it didn't crash but only a little dent, nobody was hurt. I was a bit nervous, but figured it was no big deal. So, we started going again. Soon we reached the place where they crashed.
It was at a curve in the road. On the right side there was a steep hill and on the left side there was a construction vehicle parked (it's been parked there for at least a few days). I looked off to the left and saw the bus smashed into a grouping of small trees on a small hill, I saw all of our team standing around, seemingly alright but definitely shaken up. I quickly got out of Frew's car to hug my parents. I then learned what happened.
The bus was coming down the hill and coming up to the curve, a construction vehicle was coming up the hill and forced its way into the path of the bus in order to get around the parked construction vehicle. This caused the bus to go off of the road, at this time it ran into a few trees and started to lose balance. The drive swerved back onto the road but the bus had already started to tip, if it had fallen over it would have tumbled down quite a steep hill. The driver then lost control and they went on the other side of the road, narrowly missing a group of pedestrians standing along the road. This is when they went up the small hill and into the trees. Even at this point the bus almost tipped over again.
Somehow the bus didn't tip, somehow it didn't roll off the side of the cliff and somehow everyone walked away without so much as a scratch. This is nothing short of a miracle. The people in the bus explained it as feeling like something was pushing the bus exactly where it needed to go in order that nobody would be hurt. I don't know how it's possible, but this was definitely a miracle. I don't know how it could be anything else.

Needless to say, this kind of shook everyone up for the morning. Even so, we still went on to Sendafa and continued our work there. Today the government gave a ceremony for us to commemorate all of the books that we donated (I want to say that it was 20,000, but I am not positive). They also gave a painting to our church to thank us for all the work that has been done in the village.

I was able to go to the school today. Some of our team has been teaching conversational English there. I was part of the group that did that last year, but today was the first time I was able to go on this trip. The kids were wonderful. They are so grateful for the teaching and are so excited to be with us. It's quite sweet.

I also visited a few more HIV patient's homes today. This is always difficult for me, I often find tears welling up in my eyes as I hear their stories. If I wasn't so tired I would go more in depth about these patients because I count most of them as miracles also. I will write about this some other time.

Denahun