Finding Pekabridge

I had just finished an awesome weekend of leading the worship at the ladies retreat for Lesotho missionaries in South Africa. It was the end of the month and a weekend so towns were a bit busier than usual. As I was packing up to leave a friend told me she was going to try crossing the boarder at Pekabridge, in hopes to avoid the traffic and congestion at the larger cities and their boarders. So rather than praying and asking God for His guidance on the matter my co workers (and friends) decided to try Pekabridge. What could be the harm, right? We made the turnoff for the boarder and ended up on a dirt road. But we kept on trekking... we came to a small cluster of houses and one of the ladies in my car, Bonang, asked a couple of children if we were headed in the right direction. The said no, we must turn around, so Bonang got out of my car and went to one of the houses to confirm with an adult. Sure enough, they said to turn around. So we did, we headed back to the junction of the main road when the other woman in my car, Marethabile, had me hail down an oncoming truck because we couldn't find the junction that would take us to Pekabridge. The woman i hailed down told us that the people we just came from decieved us and that we were indeed going the right way. Soooooo, at the point where any sane person would just throw in the towel and take the main road, we turned back around, following our new directions with our hearts set on driving across the boarder through Pekabridge. We drove on the dirt road. We just kept driving and driving further north. I tried ringing my friend who suggested taking the new way to warm her about naughty people giving bad directions, not to mention the whole dirt road thing. We prayed that God would help us to find our way to Pekabridge. We just kept driving and driving and finally we're like, "We're lost, lets turn around and go back." We drove about 500 meters when a man and his wife drove up. I flagged them down and said "We're lost, Ntate. Do you know the way to Pekabridge?" He was ALSO on his way to Pekabridge and I only understood about half of what he said because at this point Marethabile was laughing SO hysterically, crying and falling over and the like, but I turned around and followed him. He was going to Pekabrige after all and we had prayed for God to show us the way. We followed him, driving and driving and driving. We were still headed in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go, and now the ladies in my car had a sneaking suspicion that this man was trying to save face and act like he knew where he was going, rather than admitting that he, too, was lost. We passed some game, zebra, ostrich, antelope. Cows, lots and lots of field. Finally, Oh praise God, FINALLY we approached something that looked like a boarder post. With a big red sign on it, that read "CLOSED." The Ntate driving indicated for me to pull up next to him and he said, "There is your Pekabridge. It is closed." No kidding. Next to the gate there was a sign that read the times, and the boarder post had closed at 4pm. It was 4:45pm. So the man suggested that I go to the next closest boarder up north. No way, i think, I am going to Maseru and I am praying for no queues. So me and my friends drove on another dirt road for about 5 minute when we get to the main road. No sign there indicating you can get to the Pekabridge boarder from there. We had driven about 30K out of our way. Praise God, when we got to the Maseru boarder we basically drove through, hardly anyone standing in line. I called Nathan about 5 minutes after crossing the boarder, on my way to drop off my friends, to tell him I was broken down. The clutch had died. Literally I would tap it and it would get sucked down to the floor and stick. Maybe out of fluid, who knows. So I had to be towed home. And thank God that didn't happen in the middle of "no man's land" on our Pekabridge adventure. So if you are ever in South Africa looking to take an eastern boarder post into Lesotho, go through, Botha Buthe, Maputsoe, even Maseru, but steer clear of Pekabridge. Unless you have a spirit of adventure. And you get there before 4pm.

On a side note, the friend who suggested Pekabridge didn't even end up going that way. She and her carload went through Maputsoe.