Clunk, clunk, clunk. I stuck my head out the window of our truck and heard that the sound was coming from the rear. I stopped the truck, and Fidel and I got out to investigate. When I got to the back wheel I yelled to Fidel in surprise, “Come and see!”
It all had started two days earlier as I was helping an expat friend close down her house and haul out some items. I had been talking with the lady who cleans her house, and she had mentioned that her 20-year-old son was suffering with a mysterious medical problem. They had been to the hospital for many tests but still didn’t have a diagnosis. So I called Fidel, and he agreed to go and pray with the young man.
The next day as I was heading home in the loaded truck, I heard some clanking but decided it was just a chunk of plastic that kept flapping around and rubbing on a tire. At home we unloaded the truck, then Fidel and I drove back to my friend’s house, which is about 20 miles away. On arriving, we loaded the truck and then met with the young man and his mother and grandmother. Fidel had done some praying about the situation. First he talked with the mother, and she told him some of her history in and out of Christianity. She repented before God, and Fidel prayed with her.
Then Fidel turned to the son and prayed for him. For more than a year, the son had been throwing up most of his meals. He had gotten so weak that he had to quit school. They had done all kinds of tests at the best hospital in Benin and hadn’t found anything, but he continued to vomit.
When his mother first told me his story, I suspected demonic involvement. I asked if someone in the family had something against them. They replied that an uncle didn’t want his brother’s children to go to school, and he had told them that if they continued to go to school they would die.
After praying for the young man, rebuking the demons that were causing him to vomit and asking God to heal him, we invited his mother to take a step of faith and get him something to eat. The young man ate and didn’t vomit.
Now back to our clunking truck. As I inspected the left rear wheel I found to my great surprise that all the lug nuts were extremely loose, threaded about half an inch up the studs. I called Fidel over to look. We both felt that this was the work of Satan. The wheel hadn’t been removed recently, and all the nuts had been properly tightened.
We re-tightened the lug nuts and kept driving. But we hadn’t gone far before the truck overheated, and we had to stop again. Lo and behold, I found the fan belt was off its pulley. We tried calling a few people, but the connection was weak. To connect, we had to stand in the middle of the road. We tried to figure out how to get to Tanguieta to get our other truck.
As we were trying to find someone with a motorcycle to come and get me, a guy who attends our church group drove up. He looked under our truck’s hood and pointed out that a second belt had become shredded and had pushed the other belt off its pulley. He was a big help, because not only could he take me to pick up the other truck, but he could come back and drive the second one while I towed it. So we got into town, got the other truck, and towed the broken one back home. It took some work to get the two trucks over the many speed bumps on that road, but we made it.
Though Satan meant all this for evil, God was in control. He kept our wheel from coming off, and even lined up a ride for us. Praise Him for His faithfulness!
