There Are No Tostitos In South Africa

True... No Tostitos in South Africa... No salsa, either. An odd discovery, but one which I made the other night as I was waiting for my friends to return from the clinic. It was around 11 p.m., and I had just been woken up by Craig Leach, banging on my door and shouting my name over and over again -- "Adella! Adella! Adella! We're taking Katie and Diana to the clinic. We've had a wreck!..." They had wrecked the Defender. I didn't know it was possible to wreck a Defender, but evidently, it is. The road had been washed out by the heavy rains. Everyone but me, Kristen, and Bryan were in the car. Katie and Craig were riding on top, Diana was in the front w/Will, who was driving. The Defender met the crater in the road, smushed onto its left-hand side, sending Diana's head into the windshield (which cracked the glass), and launching Katie end-over-end onto the hood of the car, and finally into the road, directly in front of the left tire. Diana became immediately nauseous (concussion?), and Katie had numbness and tingling in her feet (compressed vertabrae?). They loaded up in the combi (mini-van), and headed to Hermanaus where the closest doctor could be found. Bryan, Kristen, and I stayed back, where we prayed, then prayed some more. We continued praying -- just talking to God over and over again. We called on the God who is sovereign, the God who hears the cries of His children, the God who delivers, the God who heals, the God who has power, the God who restores, the God who holds, the God who protects, the God who leads His own through mysteries like injured friends who are headed to the hospital in a country 7,000 miles from home... I confess I was mad. Not mad at God, just mad that something like this happened -- mad because my friends were hurt, mad at myself for not being in the car headed to the clinic, mad because I was tired and sick, and couldn't climb in the car with them. I'm glad I have a God who lets me be angry, doesn't turn away from my anger, listens to my rages, and says: "tell Me more." He heard me, He heard Bryan, He heard Kristen. He heard the prayers of those friends who accompanied Katie and Diana to the clinic. He heard the prayers of the friends at Cedar Springs, back in Knoxville. He heard it all... Their x-rays came back clean, and they were released with a dosage of muscle relaxers -- no concussions, no compressed vertabrae -- and they returned back to the farm around 2 a.m. God heals, restores, listens, and so much more...

So, there are no Tostitos in South Africa. I'm okay with that... my friends are safe, healthy, and happy. We'll get the Tostitos when we get back to America.