Our humbling Easter

We miss our porter park people SOOO much that we have been back to Arizona  almost half the weekends we have spent out here, or have had porter park guests. If you are a porter parker, you are contractually obligated to come and visit and have a granny shack experience. We went back for Easter and had a blast. We cleaned the church, spent the day celebrating a friend's birthday, went to women's conference, our traditional ladies dinner at Chili's afterwards, and then had Family Home Easter with our regular FHE families. It was delightful. And then we left, and it was less delightful.

As we approached Quartzsite, my truck's cruise control started slowing down, so I turned it off and then was still having a hard time keeping my speed. We pulled over and immediately started over heating. Awesome. We were unprepared. Every time Rudy has gone out on a long trip for work I have sent him with my 72 hour kits, and naively never replenished then, so we had nothing. We waited for the car to cool down and made it another few miles before we started over heating again. As we stared straight into the upcoming hill we decided we would call AAA to take us into Blythe.

Unfortunately, we deposited Rudy's check on a Saturday evening and it wasn't available so we needed to be bailed out. Always humbling, and we're always grateful! So we stay in Blythe overnight and are just so grateful that we are able to finally get our kids some dinner and not have to sleep in the car. At least we had blankets if needed. The next morning we indulge in the free breakfast and snag some yogurts and danishes just in case we need them later. We go to kmart and stock pile water gallons, snacks and a pizza, and then head out after a minor hose repair. We know we need all the help we can get and say one last prayer before going down the open road. Talk about terrifying!

In between Blythe and Indio there is a 50 mile stretch where there are no amenities. We are burning through 2 gallons of water every 5-7 miles, and needing to stop and fill the bottles back up with nowhere in sight. We say a prayer and ask to find water. We find a well... that doesn't have a key or anyone around to assist us. So we just decide to drive in the shoulder going about 10 mph. There is a huge wind storm, but that was keeping everything cool enough that the water temperature wouldn't go into the red. We finally start noticing there are a ton of water bottles on the side of the road. Mostly filled with urine, but we start finding water ones and snatched those right up. We have enough to put in the car and make it to our next stop.

We fill up our gallons, but the post office didn't have a public restroom so we have to drive like 10 miles up the road. These 50 miles took us well over 4 hours, so this was a most necessary detour, especially with a 4 year old. Surprisingly nice bathrooms!

We get back on the road and it starts getting dark, which made me so nervous. But we remained prayerful and faithful. We got to Palm Desert area and that made me feel much better because from then it's constant civilization. Mind you, we're still pulling over every 10 miles to refill our water, and every 30 miles we need to stop at a gas station to refill our bottles. This is seemingly obnoxious, but we got our mojo and it was rather comical. A couple times we didn't bother exiting and filled up on the side of the road. One of these times a CHP officer pulls over to make sure we're ok and tells us to get off the freeway asap. We tell him ok, but we're still 40 miles from home, which in our ghetto situation is like HOURS! So we keep driving, because what else are we going to do?! So we get to Upland. 17 miles from home. And are pulled over and putting water in, and the car won't start. The battery is dead. The car survived 250 miles with water in the engine, but this battery can't make it another 17 miles??!! That SAME CHP officer pulls over and this time is less than cordial because he told us to get off the road hours ago. Whoops, sorry buddy. We call AAA, and we only have 7 miles of free towing and we have to pay the rest... which is fine except I told you about our crappy financial situation and once again need to be bailed out.

What an adventure.

5.5 hour trip was 30 hours. By the grace of God, the charitable hearts of our family, the AAA man who worked on Easter-away from his family, the sweet hotel workers, also away from their family on a holiday,  it's a miracle we made it home. We felt Heavenly Father's love for us and saw his hand in all the miracles along the way. That truck should not have made it home. There was water in the engine, when you checked the oil it was so watered down it would just slick off the dipstick. When you put water in it would create this giant white cloud of smoke until all the water was burned out.

During conference there was a quote and this might not be exact "wouldn't it be great if we could be humble without being compelled to be humble?" No joke. God is good, the gospel is true. I hope your Easter was less of an adventure, but that you could still feel the love of your Savior without being compelled so forcefully into humility :)