Because it was time my island car broke down...

When I took the kids home from church, they told me the earlier driver had hit a bump and then the car was smoking. Maybe I should have paid a little more warning to that...

I did the after church van run with little problem. There was a little rattle, but I hadn't driven it since arriving on Tuesday, so I couldn't say if it was a new or an old rattle.  This afternoon, I left out at about 3:30pm to pick up the Kagman youth for Youth Night down in the village of Dan Dan at Pastor Chad and Angela's house.  The rattle was still there, but it seemed insignificant enough. I picked up the youth, and then we needed to make a fast beach stop to get some sand for one of my activities tonight.  When we got back in the car, I said the air con wasn't really cooling very well, so I thought we should roll down the windows.  

As we started going up the mountain to come out of Kagman, it didn't seem super powerful.  But I did have a van load of kids.  We got caught at the light at the top of the hill.  There were two cars in front of me.  The light turned green, and I went to go. 

I couldn't accelerate. 

I couldn't break. 

I started rolling backward down the mountain.  

I was able to get the car in park. And then I might have panicked a little.  

We waved the cars around me. (No one even honked!)  Every time I was about to get brave enough to pull it out of park, a new set of cars would get behind me.  I was in the turn lane, and if I could just get us over a smidge, there was a gas station.

A guy come from the other direction, rolled down his window and asked if we were okay. I said, "no."  So, he went and parked in the gas station, and got the van in the parking lot.  It worked just fine for him.  (Thankfully, but go figure.)  He said he wasn't a mechanic and had no way of telling me what was wrong. So we decided since we were just a half a mile from the church, maybe I would drive it there and he would follow. Well, the van wouldn't start. I tried a few times and it would just die. 

My phone doesn't work here.  None of the youth had phones.  And the only number I had memorized was the house that no one was home. He offered to give us a ride since we couldn't call anyone.  

And so, we hitched a ride island style back to the house. (And the van is still at Kagman Mobile.)