Grateful

We had quite the experience coming back from our fun-filled family reunion this past weekend in Arizona. (That post soon to come.) And just so you can consider yourself warned, beware this is the LONG version. Continue at your own risk! First of all, Cort left us on Sunday afternoon, because he had to fly out of Phoniex for a quick trip to California, so I was on my own driving back all 10-12 hours, which really I thought was no big deal. I've done it before so I wasn't that concerned. Anyways, so somehow as we said our good-byes and we left the cabin I mis-read the GPS unit and started heading in the WRONG direction. I kept noticing that we were heading south and I kept saying to myself, this can't be right! But I had no service on my phone to call and ask anyone, so I just decided to go with it. However, it didn't feel right. So I said a quick prayer that if we were heading in the right direction I would feel ok about it. I never did. I should of known at that point to turn around. Well, I didn't until my phone finally picked up service and I found out that we had driven in the wrong direction for the past hour and a half!! I immediately had a good cry and then I thought of Elder Wirthlin's last talk "Come what may and love it!" And I decided this wasn't the end of the world, and we turned the car around and started heading back to the cabin to start over. So three hours later we were back where we started and we then began to proceed in the right direction. Lesson one that I learned from this was when you feel like something's not right, it's probably not, and to go with it. So we decided to continue driving and see how far we could get. At that point it was about 4:00 Arizona time and 5:00 Utah time. After a couple hours of driving, I found myself with another decision, which really at that time didn't seem like it was that big of a deal, I just had to decide which way we were going to go. We could go either the same way we usually went through Page, Arizona or we could take a less known way through Fredonia Arizona, past Jacob's Lake on a winding mountain road. I really wanted to go this way. I had never been that way and I had heard it was beautiful. However, something told me NOT to go that way. Learning from my previous mistake of the day, I decided to listen. And I'm so grateful I did. From what I understand of it that road is less traveled then the other one and like I said it is a winding road that climbs up the mountain. We passed the turn off to Fredonia and then passed Page and then it happened about 30 miles out of Kanab, I felt something. At the time I didn't know what it was or what had happened the car jerked a bit and then started making a really loud noise. I thought to myself "you have got to be kidding me!!" And then I thought I'm just going to keep going we can't be stranded out here. Then I looked out the window and noticed the car smoking. I then knew I needed to pull over. So there we were at 10:30 at night in the middle of no where, with NO phone service, with a blown out tire, that I had no idea how to change. It was then that I realized why I wasn't suppose to go the Fredonia way. The first thing we did was pray. We prayed hard. I then felt a little calmer and I told the kids, a couple times, not to worry that Heavenly Father would send someone nice to help us and we were going to be ok. I then knew I needed to be proactive. So I got out of the car and started walking around in the dark, all the while hoping that I wasn't going to run into any snakes, trying to get a call out to someone, anyone at that point! I got nothing. However within in about 10 minutes a huge truck pulled up. It was a Kane County deputy. I knew our prayer was being answered. I was standing outside when he pulled up, and I walked up to his truck and he asked me "you guys ok?" I immediately replied with a "no we are not." He got out and came over to my car and started rumbling through it looking for all the tools he needed to change our tire. I was so overwhelmed with his kindness. As he was changing the tire, Taylor hopped out of the car and came over to us. I immediately told her to get back in the car I didn't want her standing along the highway in the dark with cars zooming by. She said ok, but that she had to tell me something real quick, that she just said a prayer to our Heavenly Ftaher to thank Him, for sending this nice police officer to help us. Right then, at that moment, I felt a lot of gratitude. I felt grateful that the deputy had stopped and was so kind to us, I felt grateful that we didn't take the other way, knowing that maybe a nice person wouldn't have been there to help us out or even worse I could of lost control of the car. Which for the record, the deputy kept saying how good of a driver I am for not losing control of the car and for keeping it on the road. But most of all, I felt grateful for this experience. I know it is something that Taylor and maybe Chasey, won't forget, and neither will I. Heavenly Father is there. He is real. He does answer prayers. He is aware of our situations and troubles and He is working with us as we work with Him. I don't ever want to forget how I felt that night, as my testimony of prayer was strengthened and as my children's testimonies of it began to grow as well. It is times and experiences like these that I cherish the most. I don't ever want to forget.