OUR NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

The green bus...our needle

Have you ever looked for a needle in a haystack? Have you found one? Well we did this week. We had the opportunity to take an Elder and his companion to the doctor. They live about one and a half hours away from town, and the bus that they take home leaves one time a day in the afternoon...usually before 5:00pm. Our appointment was at 3:00 and we knew it would be close as to whether or not they would make their bus on time. An even bigger problem was the fact that no one seemed to know where this bus was, what time it left or even which part of town it left from.

We had a pretty good idea that most of the buses that went out of town parked on a certain street in a certain part of town for a little bit of time. If it sounds confusing, just imagine Elder Tomkinson and his intricate maps to get to a camp out. The street system and lack of maps here is driving him crazy. Here we are with two elders who don't know any more about it than we do, looking for a bus in a city with probably 10,000 buses...(I am not exaggerating..they are everywhere and all look the same). We had driven to this area only once before, taking a companionship to an appointment. I remembered seeing buses in the area....

WELL....can you believe it??? WE FOUND THE BUS! As we rode down the street, one of the Elders shouted, "There it is!" I couldn't see any specific bus...but he knew it by sight. We parked as fast as we could, and I told them to run and let the bus driver know that they were there. Then we got the suitcases, waved bye and off they went. The bus left within one minute of our arrival. There was another set of our missionaries on the bus...they were all waving at us and giving us the thumbs up. We heard "Thanks Elder and Hermana Tomkinson." It doesn't get any better than that. What makes the story even better is about three hours later we got a call from the missionaries letting us know that they had arrived home and all was well. They thanked us again. Every time they see us now we will remember the dash to the bus.

If I had heard this from someone else, I would have thought it was an exaggerated Mormon folklore story. If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't believe it...the Lord really does look out for his missionaries. Even in finding buses on time.