Breakdown at midnight

Once we were going  to Kerala as we were planning to keep Timmy with my parents for his studies from sixth standard.  He did his 6,7,&8 in Kerala.   For some reason we decided to go through Madurai.  At 7 pm we were in Coimbatore and filled the tank with sufficient fuel and proceeded our journey.   We had finished all our money except a fifty rupee note and a little change. By about 11.30 we reached Dindigul.  At Dindigul I got down and had a cup of tea and proceeded further.

Unknowingly I missed the by pass road to Madurai and got right into the city of Dindigul.  As we reached the central part of the city we had to go slowly as people were still in the streets.  Once I had to stop the vehicle.  On trying to move the vehicle, it would not move.  Engine was OK.  But the van was not moving.

When we were standing there not knowing what to do, a Muslim friend came to me and asked me what the problem was.  He had seen me in the previous place stopped for tea.  Now again when he saw us standing on the road he doubted some problem.  My van had gospel verses written all over.  That attracted the Muslim to us.  He asked us whether it was a church vehicle to which I gave a positive reply.  When he knew that the van had some problem, he looked at his watch and found it was12 midnight.  He became very concerned as he saw Joyce and five children in the van.  He said that it would be very difficult to get any help at that part of the night anywhere there.  Then suddenly he remembered a matador owner who had his own workshop.  He hired a bicycle from nearby and asked me to sit behind him and took me to that workshop.

As we reached there, the man  just closed his shop and he had one foot on his bicycle just about to leave the place.  Then I explained my situation to him and he said his van would come at 2.30 am and then he would come to toe mine to the work shop.  Believing his words we came back to our van and the Muslim friend consoled me and left the place.  So we were waiting till 2.30 in the van with much prayer for the arrival of the mechanic with his van which he did very promptly.  He toed our van to the workshop and dropped Joyce and children in the Gospel Hall and came to work on my van. 

The owner of the workshop was there at that time and he knew uncle C.V. Samuel. who was evangelist at Dindigul.  When he knew who I was and where I was going, he told his foreman not to wait till morning but to fix the vehicle and let us leave by early in the morning.  My van’s clutch had failed.  In the night he got a used clutch and by six in the
morning the work was over.  He asked me money for break fluid and I gave him the last fifty rupee note in my hand.  By 7 in the morning the van was ready to go.

As I did not have any money in my hand I gave him my wrist watch and told him that I would come back in a week and get my watch back by paying the workshop bill.  Interestingly the watch on my hand was a brand new Citizen automatic which would cost about a thousand rupees.  It came to me just the previous day.  Before that I had an electronic watch with me which was worth just one hundred rupees!

Just imagine if the Muslim had not help me, if the mechanic had already gone, if the owner was not kind hearted, if they had asked me money for spare parts before work began, and if I did not have a costly watch on me!  Even in that difficult situation the Lord was very kind to us.  We praise Him for His wonderful ways in our lives. After this incident we have used the same road several times.  Every time we had sufficient money for any emergency.