Nr.106 ended with: “But as we were nearing the city, driving 80 km an hour, a car from a side road to the right ran a stop sign and there was a terrible crash……..…..!” (See richardandmarina.net).
Because the side road was sort of hidden, we did not see the car coming until he was pretty well in front of us. I slammed on the brakes as we hit him right in the middle, causing him to roll over a number of times, ending up on its side across the road in the bushes. We sat somewhere in the middle of the road a bit dazed, still shocked at what had just happened, but most surprised that we were not really hurt. Marina had nothing! I broke my top dentures by hitting the steering wheel with my mouth, and also hitting the left side of my chest, which later showed some blue spots, but no broken bones at all. It was absolutely amazing! The policemen shook their heads in utter disbelief. Imagine hitting a car at that speed and not having safety belts on, they were not in use then yet in most cars. Marina should have been thrown against the dashboard, but inexplicably, she hadn’t been. Was there an angel between her and the dash?
It took some time to free the young driver, the only one in the other car. He was very seriously hurt and was in the hospital for a very long time. We never found out why he drove onto our highway at great speed. The police called the people we were going to stay with and they came to get us. Our car was a total wreck and completely written off. I called Ollie Shantz, one of the men who had rented the car for us, the other being Edgar Martin, and told him what had happened. I glued the two pieces of my dentures together and still preached that evening, but there was a crack between my front teeth and as I spoke, the skin of my top lip would get squeezed and it really hurt, but the Lord gave grace and we had a wonderful meeting. But what to do now, we had just started our trip and now, no car………?! (Go to Musings)