Meeting with a Cow

Little did we know the adventure that awaited us as we agreed to join our partners for a trip to the animal reserve called Pilansburg. Our children had not had the opportunity to go and see the animals in the wild, so we thought it was a good time to expose them to reality. It was a 2 and a half hour trip there, so we left at 5am to get there bright and early. The animals are very active in the morning and late afternoon and other than that you drive around a lot, eating dust and looking and looking. Our sacrifice paid off as we saw a lot of giraffes, including the one above of a baby with her mother.



We always joke with a visitor that we will see how their prayer life is based on how many of the big five that we see. Well, our visitor's prayer life was sad as we hardly saw anything except a lot of rhinos and giraffes; we were even beginning to question our own prayer life. Now don't get me wrong as it is an amazing thing to see a rhino or a giraffe, but you want to see the lion and the elephant. Our guest was so desperate to see an elephant that there was one around every corner it seemed, and we were so tired of stopping at every far off speck on the hill that I finally joked with Susan that there's an elephant, and she hollered, "Stop, it really is an elephant!" There is nothing quite like seeing an elephant walking. Well, we turned around and headed up the road to where we thought he was headed and soon enough there he was. Your heart starts racing when you come close to one, but it is so amazing that I cautiously followed him in reverse, and let me tell you, my knees were shaking, but I was exhilarated!


This is how close we were to him and he was a big boy. So all in all, it was a poor showing for the day, but it ended with a bang. We were joking at dinner about your adrenline pumping and your knees knocking in the presence of a pachyderm, but little did we know what awaited us in about an hour.

Part of our drive home is over roads that are unlit, and about a 50 kilometers out of the Pilansburg area, in the midst of one of those very dark areas, I saw Dave's brakelights come on as he began swerving through a group of cows. I was amazed at his driving ability and assumed that he pulled over it due to an adrenline rush, but when I walked up to his car I found the windscreen (windshield) gone and the men in front shaking glass out of their clothes. I found a cow over in the field and Karin, in back, had a huge welt on her forehead from the rear view mirror flying off the screen. It was amazing to see the damage to the car, and yet apart from cuts and bruises, everyone was fine. Even more amazing was the fact that the car was still driveable, and that is what we did. We were out in the middle of nowhere, the police weren't coming and we were 2 hours from home, so Dave and I drove it home. Here is what it looked like the next day.



The car was totaled by the insurance company and is now probably a small square of scrap but it was used by God to spare the life of 5 people in it. Ps. 139:7 comes to mind as I think of how out in the middle of nowhere we find God's presence protecting His people. I could have been following much closer behind and if the cow had gone over the car, we could have hit it too, but God was in control. So anytime we drive now and see a cow by the side of the road, we take extra care, even in the daylight.