On Friday night we left Brainerd, MN at 5pm. We stopped two hours later to pick up our babysitter Rachel who was hitching a ride back to CO with us (which turned out to be a blessing). Then hustled on our way, hoping to arrive in Denver around 9AM. At 2AM we hit Little Sioux Iowa and our Tahoe's alternator blew and there we were, 5 of us with a dead car in the middle of nowhere. Our first blessing was that we broke down three miles from a dangerous Indian reservation. Although this doesn't sound like a blessing, if we would have broke down three miles later we were told by numerous people that we very likely would have been robbed by Indians!
It turned out that there were too many mosquitoes outside to be out of the car, so we had to keep the doors and windows shut with all five of us in a dead HOT and SWEATY car. Mason and Jackson were overheating so we were taking turns running through the mosquitoes with them to cool them down but keep them from being bit. Our second blessing was that both boys were miraculously calm and good. Also that we had a cooler full of cold water from my parents, which I had been reluctant to bring with. The next blessing was that we had a AAA membership, but that only allows for 5 miles of towing. But... they made an exception and for $100 allowed us to upgrade to "platinum" on the spot which meant we could be towed 100 miles. Typically it takes 72 hours for a platinum upgrade to take effect. At $4 a mile, this saved us $400! But... it did take over two hours for AAA to dispatch us a tow truck.
Our next blessing was that Rachel's aunt and uncle lived about 45 minutes away so she was able to call them and her uncle came and rescued us. Matt went with the tow truck, and planned on getting a hotel room in Omaha, and we went back to her aunt and uncles house. It was amazing, at 4AM her aunt had made us all beds, prepared breakfast for us, and even had toys for Jack to play with. The next blessing was the tow truck driver. He drove Matt from hotel to hotel with no vacancies. It turned out to be the College World Series and there was no vacancy ANYWHERE in Omaha. The tow truck driver said he even brought him to the sleaziest hotel around and not even a vacancy there. He did this at absolutely no charge and treated us great. So Matt ended up sleeping in the Tahoe at the dealership with doors open, being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
The next series of blessings was that the dealership opened up 1 hour earlier than advertised, they were open on a Saturday, they pushed our car to the front of the line after hearing our story, they fixed it in 2 hours, and they gave Matt a $100 discount purely for asking. We did still have to spend $457. Ugh.
The next morning we were blessed by Rachel's Aunt and Uncle who fed us breakfast, and drove us to meet with Matt, saving us 1.5 hrs on our trip home. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and we rolled in the driveway around 6pm, 26 hrs after leaving Brainerd.
Although we were exhausted, bug bitten, tired, and now broke, it was impossible to not see all of the ways that God blessed us through this experience. What a trip.
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