Wild Adventure With God As Our Tour Guide

Today a new adventure started. My new found friend Lesley (from New Zealand) and I decided we were going to try and find a hot springs called Ba Yan Wild Springs. Now, this isn't any old hot springs, it's the free and illegal one. Perfect! We are both up for fun and adventure so the plan was fitting.

I found a blog with all the information. It looked great! The blog said we needed to catch bus 1717 (which runs every hour) over Ming Shun mountain. Great. So I know what bus to take but I don't know where the bus stop is to pick up. To make sure I had all possible information I continued to read through the comments of the blog. One person mentioned Taipei Main Station to be where bus 1717 leaves from.

(For those of you who don't know where I live, I live on Ming Shun mountain. So getting to the MRT takes a little bit and then finding my way to Main Station is an ordeal as well. Also, those of you who know me know that I get distracted. My distraction came when I started Skyping with Sarah and latter Matt P. I got so distracted that I forgot to write all the information down).

1:00pm was the designated time to meet at Shilin MRT. From there we proceeded to Taipei Main Station. When we stepped off the MRT (which at this point was underground) it was like a ant nest. Everyone going everywhere. Awesome. Now what do we do? Lesley and I started the long task of finding the bus stop to take us to a nice day at the hot springs. We finally found the bus and asked the driver to take us to the hot springs (I'll remind you, we don't have the name, location, or anything). Needless to say, we ended up somewhere other than the free hot springs. The driver drove to a resort!
Ending up at a resort wouldn't have been a problem except neither of us had money.

Next plan of action was to find an English speaking person. With Gods help it didn't take long and we were off by foot down the mountain. As we walked I got the idea to try and hitch hike. The cars seemed to speed up as they saw Lesley and myself. With each vehicle that passed we laughed at the thought of jumping on. Lesley and I shot up a prayer asking for any kind of a ride. I walked with my thumb out for about 12 minutes and a nice BMW pulled up beside us! As the car slowed down I could see a family with smiling faces greeting me. The son spoke English!

This family asked us where we were trying to go and started taking us without a second thought. We tried to explain the location to them but they became just as confused as we were. The dad decided to pull over and ask a local restaurant about the hot springs. As we all stood in this nice restaurant they mother takes my hand as says, "You eat lunch with us."

They happily payed for our meal! One of the nicest acts shown to me so far in Taiwan. This family shows Gods amazing love with poise. We prayed with them before the meal and talked about religion, family, culture, and education. God was working!

After the meal the mama saw the view and wanted to get pictures taken with us. What a loving and kind woman she was. Lesley and I thought we would try and find the bus stop to get home but before we could say goodbye they asked us were we lived. Once again, God is looking out for us. They gave us a ride back! As we drove home the dad asked if we wanted to see some sights on the way. Of course I did! We didn't have any money or gifts to give so we decided to sing them a song. My God Loves Me came into mind and we sang that to offer thanks haha. After we finished they wanted us to sing it again!

This nice family dropped Lesley and myself off at Shilin Night Market by the MRT. Before we parted Lesley and I stood on the sidewalk and gave praise to God for his marvelous kindness and protection. She walked away to head towards her bus, leaving me along in line for mine.

God is SO good!