In college, I ran a Sunday School Bus route. We would go out each Saturday to visit our regulars, look for new folks to invite and then come by on Sunday morning to pick them up for church. Sometimes, I fell like everything I do here in Togo as a missionary has its roots tied into those days back in Jacksonville. Take this morning for an example, Adie and I left the house around 7 a.m. for church. We had five guys meet us at our house wanting a ride to church. Our house is about a 2 hour walk from the church but only about a 15 minute ride. We gave them a ride and en route we stopped to pick up an elderly lady in her early 70's. Interestingly enough, she told us yesterday that she has no idea how old she actually is. There are no records of her birth. So it was at her house that we also ended up picking up some extra little ones since we had more space in the rear of the truck. Now, the truck itself only has 6 seat belts but "they say" you can supposedly put another 4 more in the rear--that would be 10 total. Well, we kind of pushed the limit and had 17! We had 7 up front and an additional 10 more in the rear. It wwas an interesting ride to church to say the least! So, it would seem that those three years spent running buses every weekend on the north side of Jacksonville wasn't in vain! I have ended up using everything I learned from there each and every weekend here!
