Life in the Land of the Unexpected: The Story of a Truck Rollover

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Joel went out as truck driver with a building team from the Construction and Maintenance Department (CAM) which will be building a home for the Boyd family, Bible translators in Enga Province. The trip that should have been about 12 hours’ drive on difficult roads, spread over two days, ended after just a few hours. The truck hit a pothole, causing the passenger-side tires to fall off the edge of the road and the top-heavy truck to turn over onto its passenger side in a grassy ditch.
Thankfully, there were only two very minor injuries. The construction materials loaded in the back of the truck shifted, but were undamaged. The truck itself was only slightly damaged. EVERYTHING and EVERYONE came out essentially unscathed, except maybe Joel’s pride. If you were going to have a trucking accident, you would want it to happen like this one did.

Our mission center dispatched personnel and security resources, and a private tow truck arrived several hours later to upright the vehicle. A trucking company was hired; the CAM team spent 12 hours the next day transferring the load from our truck to the commercial truck. That vehicle and the building team headed out to the village the following morning, and it looks like the build will begin just 24 hours after it was supposed to.

But if you’re like me, you start to ask, “WHY?” God, why did you allow this to happen? Why all the extra stress, worry and work for so many people? Why the extra manpower, vehicles and financial resources? Just to have the build go on as planned, if only a little delayed???

Then, I saw this photo…

That white face under the baseball cap in the midst of all of those earnest, dark faces is Bible translator Adam Boyd. He’s sitting in the shade of the upturned truck which carries the makings of his family’s home (for which they’ve been waiting for YEARS)… and he is sharing about the work of Bible translation and the importance of God’s Word in the language people understand best. Making the most of every opportunity.

*THIS* is the GLORY of God.

Sometimes God doesn’t show you what He is up to in the midst of your difficult circumstances. Sometimes He does.

“For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” 2 Corinthians 4:5-6

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