Adventures with Baby Beluga

Never have I loved a set of struts more!

We started this blog wanting people to get a glimpse into what life is like on the mission field. One of the things that can be really tricky is car repairs.

First off, no one likes having to find a new mechanic. They rank up there with proctologists and OBGYNs - the types of folks where you want to be sure to find a great one for emergencies, and then never, ever have to search for a new one again. Now take that "fun," but in a foreign nation. There are hundreds of tiny, one-man mechanic places here. I'm sure there are some great ones, and some not-so-great ones. Our quest to find a reliable place to take our car started with checking word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and trying a couple locations out before settling on our current place. They were good to us when we needed new brakes in a hurry, did good quality work, were less expensive than others, and the front-desk guy is nice. Bingo. I think we've found our people. 

The next hurdle, though, is that every new experience here requires us to check and double check our Spanish. As the designated speaker in the family when push comes to shove, this lot often falls to me. Now, this is fine, except that I don't even know car part names or understand their functions in English, let alone Spanish. Mostly, a trip to the mechanic ends up being Mark (who was a mechanic for three years, and really does know what he's doing) being under the car and pointing, while I attempt to identify and understand the non-technical words enough to be helpful. 

Now, for easy car repairs, this is where the challenge ends. But, we're dealing with not-so-easy things on both our vehicles, including our current challenge of trying to get new shocks and struts for our van. (For those who are interested - the word for both is simply amortiguador.) Now, we drive a 2006 Chrysler Town and Country minivan. It's silver. We lovingly named it Baby Beluga. If you live in the U.S., and were on the road for more than five minutes, chances are good that you saw about a dozen of these today. In the States, they're everywhere. Here - not so much. Monday two weeks ago, we were told by our mechanic that he was sure he'd be able to track down and have the parts by that Wednesday at noon. I called on Wednesday at noon, only to find out that there were only 3 of the 4 parts that we needed in the whole country. No problem. He was going to widen his search to southern Mexico as well. Thursday I called. His connection hadn't called him back. Friday morning I called. No parts in Mexico, either. 

<whammy>

This is where creativity and problem solving are really required. I made a flurry of phone calls (thank you Jesus for the limited international calls we get per month!) to find the parts we needed in the States, near a friend of ours, who was actually flying down the following day. (It's asking a lot of someone to scurry at the last minute, but missionaries' friends are accustomed to being put out when coming to visit, unfortunately.) Found the parts! They were about 40% cheaper than the quoted price for here! They were in stock and could have been picked up within the hour! Turns out, our friend had already left the area to be closer to the city where she'd fly out. So, then what? She was willing to look around in the place they're staying tonight. (We are literally less than 17 hours from her leaving at this point.) After her own flurry of phone calls, she found out from a relative who works in a manufacturing plant that you can't take struts on an airplane because of the compressed oil inside. 

<double whammy>

I'm telling you - sometimes the most mundane parts of life become exhausting emotional roller coasters on the mission field! The drama continued with emails back and forth with a mechanic in the States who tried to figure out what it would cost to ship parts down. (That was a no go.) We thought about friends or ministries who would be driving down within the next month or six weeks who might be able to bring parts. (That was a no go.) We checked websites and made more international calls and finally <insert the strains of angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus> WE FOUND OUR PARTS!!!! So, our friend, who had arrived by then, got a whole new country in her passport and a glimpse into life in the fast lane as we headed down the mountain and into a southern Mexican border that had three Auto Zones, one of which had our parts.

<sweet, sweet success>

Two days later we had our mechanic install the parts, and we've been gleefully driving terrible, pot-holed, speed-bump-laden Guatemalan roads without dragging bottom ever since! Oh, thank you so very much, Jesus!! Like so many other things on the mission field, what should have been a simple drop off / pick up situation turned into a couple weeks of a lot of effort and tracking down leads, but IT WORKED OUT! Funny how things have a way of doing that, even if the road to success (literally and figuratively in this case) can be a bumpy one!