In True Missionary Style

This one is for you, Elisa. :)

My little neighborhood had been having power outages frequently for unknown reasons, but one day we had a scheduled outage.  I didn’t know this because I hadn’t bought a paper saying where the outage was this particular Sunday.  The outages can last anywhere from a couple of hours to all day. 

This particular Sunday, in only a way things seem to happen to me, I missed getting home by 5 minutes before the power outage started.  I pulled up to the driveway and pressed the garage door opener.  Nothing happened.  I pressed it again.  Nothing.  I hit the opener on the dashboard a couple of times (the landowner said you have to do this sometimes because the button sticks.)  Nothing happened.  By this time, a few of my neighbors had pulled up to their driveways and discovered they couldn’t get their garage doors open either.  They were honking horns and yelling at their family members to open the door.  This is when I realized the electricity was out.

“No problem.” I thought.  “I’ll just unlock the garage door, pull it open and be inside in no time.”  There was one problem with this thought – I didn’t have the key with me for that door.  “I’ll just unlock the other door, go around and open the garage door from the inside.  It worked that way the last time the electricity went out.”  I then realized there was a slight problem with this idea too.  The key for that door was stuck in the keyhole on the inside of the door.  There was no way to get inside since no one else had keys.

At first I thought I could sit outside for a little bit and wait for the electricity to come back on.  Then I remembered I was in Honduras and it could be a looong wait.  Oh, did I mention the thunder that was starting and the few raindrops I had felt?

By this time I was determined to get inside my house no matter what it took.  I noticed the wall in front of the house wasn’t all that tall.  I then noticed that the back of my car goes up the wall a good distance.  So, I backed up my car in the driveway, took my shoes off, climbed up the back of my car and up and over the wall in true missionary style.  Of course, as I was walking along the top of the wall for a place to climb down on the inside, the neighbor guys came outside.  (They already have to think I’m nuts with cutting the grass in the front yard by hand.) 

I made it over the wall with a few bumps and bruises and blue paint dust (the best way I can describe what was all over me from the roof on the wall), but I was inside!  (With no water to wash off the "paint dust" until 4 hours later.) I was never so thankful to have worn pants to church that day!  Can you imagine me doing that in a dress?!