Driving in Kosovo

Hey Family!!
Well we made it there and back safe and sound!! I even got to drive up a mtn that had ice and blowing snow and ice windshield wipers. Yikes, I forgot what it was like to drive in winter!!! Praise God He protected us! But I have a story for you as long as you parents promise not to go too over the top by the story and get worried. I'm telling you so that you can be encouraged about how God watches over your children.

We began to drive in Kosovo over this mtn. It has started snowing at the base but it wasn't very deep or very much. But the higher that we got the worse it got. The snow covered the road and the temperature droped by about 10 degrees. There was ice under the snow and the wind was blowing the snow so that it was hard to see. There were lots of bends in the road and the windshield wipers were iced over, making hard to see. It was really slow going, about 20 kms. But there weren't many people on the road. The diesel car didn't like the cold and had a hard time going into 2nd gear to get up the mtn.

I normally drove on the middle of the road because I thought 1. there are soooo few people on the road, and 2. if i hit black ice and swing off, I want to have as much distance as I can from the edge. When a car came i'd just move over.

However this one time a car was coming (me in the middle and he coming on the side that had the mtn) and i tried to move the car over but the car didn't respond! The other car came closer and in a moment of panick I crancked the wheel to the right, HARD. Not a smart move to do on an icy road, the other car could have caught the back of our car sending us spinning. But you know, that nothing happened. It was as if I had held the wheel perfectly straight in both hands. It acted like I hadn't cranked the wheel hard to the right, but I had. I knew it. Later i was telling the story and one of the ladies was like "yah, I thought that was strange that the car kept going like normal". There were another set of hands on that wheel and they weren't mine!!!

Before we started on the trip as well, God watched over us. Usually it takes 1.5 hrs to get to Lushnje and then another 45 mins to get to Durres. It took us 5 hrs to get to Durres because car wheel was dented and then became flat, we fixed it in Berat and then were stopped by the police... it was such a long trip just to get to DUrres!! But praise God that that happened when Helio was in the car (they came with us to Lushnje and then Lili and I continued without them) so he changed the tire and took care of all that.

I have pics but no time now to put them on, neser neser!
Love you guys lots!
Lynne