Pray

 

We recently went to Cyprus for a holiday with some friends, and stayed in a little town called Kissonerga in Paphos. We hired a villa there up on the hill, which sat on it’s own but was surrounded by beautiful olive trees.  Further down the hill were fields of banana trees, I had never seen so many.  The view from the villa was breathtaking, you could see the turquoise sea in the background, and the daily sunset was spectacular.  In fact, people would come from all over just to sit and watch it.

 

I took my Ipad, as I always did when I went away, and this was the perfect atmosphere and surroundings to do some writing. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the internet so I was limited to what I could do, but I managed to get some writing done, in notes.  It was lovely sitting outside in the long awaited sunshine by the pool, glancing at the turquoise sea in the distance.  

 

In the evening, I looked out at the beautiful night sky, full of twinkling stars; It was a comforting thought that Cyprus was where Paul and Barnabas first preached the Gospel. 

 

We went for a drive the next day, and visited the Nea Pafos Archaeological Site, by Paphos Harbour.  I had always wanted to see the pillars of the House of Theseus and it was fascinating walking around the site taking in everything from all those years ago. We also visited other areas, including the old town, Agios Georgios Pegeia, a beautiful little place to visit. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and a     few puffy white clouds sat here and there.  We had a lovely meal by the little Church, overlooking the sea, then started to head back to the villa, after a wonderful day out.

 

We were told by our other friends, who had arrived at the villa a few days before us, not to use the coordinates that the villa company gave us as they would take us down a very rocky, narrow road, which was a no through road. They had actually driven down there by mistake and said it was absolutely horrendous. However, this day, we were on our own, and what did John do, (without me realising it), he put in the very coordinates that we were told not to use.  We didn’t realise it until we got near to the villa.  We recognised some of the shops on the way, but it wasn’t the way we usually went back. Then, things got a little unfamiliar and we ended up, yes, on the rocky road that we were told to stay well away from.  We could see our villa below, one side of the road had no wall or boundary, just a big drop, into the villa, which was hidden by a few sticks.  The chassis of the hired car was grinding on the rocks, the thought of receiving back our large deposit on the vehicle had definitely long gone now, and the road was getting narrower, and narrower by the second. It was not a great experience.

 

After doing a hair-raising 10 point turn to get back out onto the main track (you couldn’t call any of the roads around there roads, they were tracks, as we were in the middle of the fields, as I mentioned  above), we seemed to be driving away from the villa, as none of the tracks led to it. Surely it couldn’t be that hard, the villa was just below us, there must be a road leading to it nearby. 

 

We actually drove around for an hour, and kept coming back to the same spot, which was by a little house in the middle of nowhere, with lots of washing outside on the line, and it didn’t look very inviting. The banana trees were nowhere to be seen, only other unfamiliar brambles, and trees of some kind.  We didn’t know where we were so we couldn’t call our friends to get any help, there were no road signs on the tracks, and anyway, we probably didn’t even have a phone signal. 

 

As we were driving around, the air in the car was getting hotter as John was getting very frustrated that this was now the third time we had come back to the same spot, by the washing, and I started to panic a little that we may be still driving, in the dark.  It seemed never ending.  

I finally did what I should have done an hour ago, and that was to Pray, and I asked God to help us find our way out of the maze and back to the main road so we could find the villa.  We didn’t even know what the nearest road or shop was, or anything.  We should have made a note of it.  The address of the villa was not very clear either, and when you put it in the satnav, it took you to the rocky road.  The annoying thing is, that we could see the villa below from the rocky road, but goodness knows how we were to get to it.  

 

The fourth time now, we ended up yet again at the little house with the washing and we sat there emotionally exhausted.  Suddenly, a man appeared at John's window.  He must have been in his early 80s, very rugged looking with sundrenched skin,  maybe he lived in the little house with the washing, he must be the landowner surely, otherwise who would live there in the middle of all this.  He didn’t speak English.  We tried to tell him that we needed to find the villa and showed him the name and address of the villa on our phone, thinking he will never know it as it wasn’t even a proper address, and the villa was called Villa Sandra.  He looked quite confused.  Even he didn’t know it.  Suddenly,  he motioned for us to follow him. John was not happy as he thought ‘Now where will we end up? This man doesn’t even know the address we showed him.’ We followed the man out of the maze, for a further 15 minutes, and finally we ended up on the main road that we knew and that we were looking for in the first place. I made sure to take a note of the name of the shop there and the small hotel, so if it happened again we could at least type it into the satnav and know where to turn off,  as we knew the correct way to the villa from there.

 

The man then pulled up along the roadside, and we all got out of our cars, we were so relieved.  He pointed to a road on the other side that we needed to be on, we knew that road, that was the one we were looking for and which would lead us to the villa. What a blessing.  We hugged him, he was such a lovely man, even though we didn’t understand each other, we communicated with our hearts. He was either the landowner or an Angel, either way, he was an answer to prayer.

 

A lesson learned: Pray straight away, it would have saved a lot of time and stress.