Joy of Finding Christ

        I still remember the time I almost "lost" my wife in Merida, Mexico. It's night time and we were driving around looking for a place to stay for the night. She looked in a travel guide, spotted a recommended hotel, followed the map (no GPS then) and guided me there as I drove. We got there, and since there's no parking allowed on the street, I told her to go check out the place while I drove around the block before returning. Well, driving to make four right turns in a row to get back didn't turn out to be simple, even though the blocks were all rectangular. I saw one-way streets I could not enter and back alleys I should skip. Finally, I right turned onto what appeared to be a decent street. Little did I expect that the street lead me to a huge market square filled with people. By the time I slowly emerged from the square after "plowing" through the crowds, I had no idea how far I had drifted from the hotel site. Now I didn't know how far I should drive after making each right turn and just kept spiraling away in rectangles. A last-ditch plan jumped into my mind ~ I would comb each street one by one horizontally and if necessary, vertically too, to cover the entire downtown area, even if it should take all night. Naturally, I started to pray. Then I saw the map on the vacant passenger seat next to me, picked it up and noticed a tiny pencil dot at one spot ~ could that be the mark my wife had made? I parked the car in front of a store still open even though I wasn't supposed to stop, jumped out the car, ran into the store with my map and kept pointing at that dot on the map in front of a store person, as I did not speak Spanish. After a while he understood my intention. He then located his store on the map and traced out the route on the map for me to take. The next hurdle was that the street signs were all in Spanish and difficult to see at night, so I made a list of symbols for myself. For example, R3 means that I turn right for 3 blocks, L5, left for 5 blocks, and so on. Following the list, driving and counting, the hotel finally came into view. You can imagine the joy I felt seeing my wife again who had been waiting on the dark side of the street for almost an hour! I am sharing this because the joy of finding Christ is even sweeter, for it delights the soul continually day after day.