After a somewhat leisurely breakfast, we headed out to San Juan to work on Manuel’s chair. Today we made it to this small village on the lake without too much trouble. We even found his house on the first try.
Manuel is a very talented young me I met a few months ago who drives a power chair with a chin controller Dick created for him. This has been a God-send to him, but a real challenge for Dick as he tries to keep the chair running for Manuel. About a week ago we received a call that the chair was not functioning properly, and decided to add this stop to the trip we planned this week.
When we arrived, Dick discovered he was right—it was the “brushes” that were causing the problem. (He had used baking soda and super glue to repair one when we were there a few months ago. . .guess super glue doesn’t hold everything!)
Normally this is a very simple task of pulling out the old brush and inserting a new one. Nothing was simple today, however. First, the spring had broken off the old brush, and, using my eyebrow tweezers and an eye-glass screwdriver, Dick finally managed to get it out. We sorted through a can of different brushes, and found a few we thought would work. After putting in a new one, the chair still did not run properly. Then it happened. . .as Dick was trying to remove the replaces brush, the spring broke off of THIS ONE, too. That never happens, but it did today.
This time, the tweezers, tiny screwdriver, and even shaking the chair on its side didn’t work. The carbon part of the brush wasn’t about to budge. Dick tried to remove the motor cap to get at it that way—and discovered two of the three screws were stripped.
We hiked to the local hardware store (really one shelf in a store my mom would have called a “junk shop”) and managed to find a few screws that Dick thought he might be able to “drill” into the carbon with.
This was the large selection of screws Dick had to choose from. Mechanic-ing in Guatemala is no job for the easily discouraged!
Back to the house, and back on the floor, this didn’t work either. Finally, in desperation, Dick broke the carbon into pieces, and was able to insert the new brush. This time the chair worked perfectly.
We visited the family for a few minutes, and, before leaving, I asked Manuel’s mom how we could pray for them. I then discovered she spoke mainly one of the Mayan dialects common around the lake, when Manuel’s sister had to explain to her what I had asked. The precipitated a rather lengthy discussion in Mayan, that none of us could understand, and I wondered if I had somehow offended them. Finally, Manuel’s sister explained what her prayer requests were—evidently they had been discuss what to ask me to pray for! This was a new experience to me, but I assured Mom that I would pray for her family as requested.
We set off for home, and reached the town of San Pablo without any trouble. That was, until we got to San Pablo, where we found the only entrance into the town barricaded by tuk-tuk drivers who were having a dispute with the mayor of another village. One of them came over to talk to us, and after finding out we were heading to Antigua, told us to wait a few minutes and they’d let us through.
They were not so agreeable with the pickup truck trying to pass in the opposite direction, and, when the drive of the truck looked like he was going to ram the barricade, and about 25 men suddenly swarmed his truck, Dick made a quick U-turn and headed back the way we had come. As we pulled away, one of the men whistled to us to come back, but we continued down the road without slowing. If there was to be a confrontation between the locals, we wanted no part of it. Retracing our steps would be a bit longer, but much safer.
We made good time—that is until we came to Santiago Atitlan. Here a procession honoring Maximon, a Mayan god, was getting ready to take place and the one street through town was blocked. We backed up and pretended not to know that the other street through the town was really not one-way, the opposite direction. (A number of tuk-tuks were pretending with us!)
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, though I know it was very tiring for Dick. Between the frustration of broken brushes, blocked roads, and just general congestion in the towns, he’d had quite the day.
As we were nearing Chimaltenango, where we were picking up some of his kids to ride to and from Antigua with him, God must have saw our fatigue and frustration. In the sky, there was a beautiful, full rainbow that lasted for some time. What a great reminder that, amid all the challenges, He had been with us every step of the way today. . .and a sign of His promise to continue to walk with us, no matter how rough the road!
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