Monday, March 23, 2009

Someone Prayed


For college students good part time jobs were hard to come by. I found a job driving school busses in the winter which lead me to a job driving Grayhound Busses in the summer. I was responsible for driving the second bus when the first bus was full. I would drive from Flagstaff AZ, where I was attending NAU, to Gallop NM and spend the night and drive another bus back.

My wife was pregnant with our third child. She had started having contractions one evening and sure enough they called wanting me to drive one of the busses to Gallop. I told them my wife was in labor and they would have to get someone else. They said they would get someone else, so we went to the hospital. Unfortunately it was false labor and so we ended up going back home.

I got to bed around midnight but couldn’t sleep. I keep getting the impression that I needed to go down to the bus station. Because of this, I knew they hadn’t found another bus driver. I got dressed and told my wife I needed to go down to the bus station. She couldn’t understand why, I had not received any phone call telling me I needed to.

When I got their sure enough there was a bus full of very angry passengers. The bus station was closed and they had been waiting there for hours with nothing to eat and no where to go. Had I not come they would have had to spend the night in the bus. The bus station being closed they had called everyone they could think of including the police. Needless to say they were very happy to see me. I called and woke my boss up to tell him I was driving the bus to Gallop.

When I got on the bus, some of the more aggressive passengers started questioning me. The conversation went something like this.
“Did the bus company call you?”
“NO”
“Did the police get a hold of you?
“NO”
Then who called you?
“No one.”
A moment of silence.
“Then how did you know we needed a driver?”

I thought “how do I answer this one, I want to be honest but they will think I’m crazy”.
So I simply looked out over the bus full of passengers and said,
“Someone Prayed”.
The bus went silent, as I looked at them a lady in the third row, isle seat, sheepishly made the slightest hand signal, which only I could see.
I said, “That’s why I’m here.”
I then got in the drivers seat, started the bus and drove them to Gallop.

It wasn’t the anger, rage and phone calls of the aggressive passengers that got them safely to Gallop that night. It was the lady in the third row who humbly prayed.