Last week I had the HUGE blessing of being able to travel to the state of Guanajuato and visit some other single women who are also serving with the IMB. It was a great week, where we spent time talking together, laughing together, praying together, just being together. There was only one downside to the whole trip; to get there required nearly 12 hours of bus rides.
Mexico actually has a pretty decent bus system from state to state. The busses are generally clean, mostly punctual, have their own bathrooms, and most will even play a movie or two during the ride. However, depending on where you are traveling to, there may only be one or two busses traveling your needed route a day, so if you miss that bus, or aren’t able to get a ticket, you end up sitting around for quite a while.
Well, there were no issues getting to Guanajuato. We were able to buy our tickets in advance, we met up with everyone as planned, it was great. However, because we weren’t positive what the time frame for leaving was, we decided to wait and buy our return tickets later. Of course, when we went online later to try and reserve our tickets, we realized that because we didn’t have a Mexican credit card, we would have to buy our tickets in person. Two of the girls in our group had already bought tickets on an 11pm bus, and we were hoping to ride with them, so we prayed that there would be 2 tickets left on that bus when we got there.
That night we got to the bus station almost an hour early, go up to the counter, and are promptly told that the next available bus would leave in 2 1/2 hours. The 11pm bus was sold out. We sadly bought our tickets, and prepared to say goodbye to our friends, and then sit in the bus station. However, one of our friends wasn’t giving up yet. She pulled us together, prayed that God would open up 2 seats on the bus, maybe even 2 seats together, and then she went and started talking to people. The response from everyone was the same. Unless someone cancelled their tickets at the last minute, we were stuck. It didn’t matter if someone didn’t show up on time, they would not be able to give us those seats, it had to be an actual cancellation.
At 10:50, we walked the other girls to their bus, resigned to the fact that no one was going to cancel. Then, one of the supervisors comes up to us and tells us to go to the ticket counter. So we raced back to the counter, only to be told, there were still no seats available. Confused and disappointed, we headed back to the bus. When we asked the supervisor, she told us someone else must have bought the tickets at that exact moment, because there had been 2 seats available for us. It was then about 10:58. Then, someone else comes hurrying toward us, and tells us there are 2 seats being held for us, we just have to hurry and go switch our tickets! We ran BACK to the counter, switched our tickets, hugged our 2 friends who were staying behind, and got onto the bus at the last second!
As if all of that wasn’t enough, God decided to do one more cool thing for us. The tickets we were able to get weren’t next to each other, which was fine, because we were just thrilled to make it on at all! Well, I went to take my seat, and someone was already in it. Hoping that there wasn’t some major mixup and I was going to get kicked back off the bus, I checked seat numbers with them. They had sat in the wrong seat, and their assigned seat? The one right next to Candace. I happily agreed to take their assigned seat, and just like that, we were on our way home.
Never say that God doesn’t care about the little things :)
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