GongYi Home of Hope

Bob Sayre called from the newly opened XuZhou Home of Hope to talk about some electrical problems they were having with the completed remodel work on the XuZhou facility. Over the years we have learned it is often difficult to find good craftsmen in just about any trade so we decided to send our Gongyi maintenance “Jack of All Trades” man to XuZhou to see what needed to be done to correct the problem. We have been so fortunate to have this man on our staff for the last several years. His name is Ma Hai Tao (see picture below) and is a tremendous asset to the Home of Hope.

I sent Hai Tao to XuZhou early in the morning and to keep him company on the long drive to XuZhou and since he was off school that day, we asked our oldest boy Hank, to go along for the ride. Of course he was excited about this opportunity and so off they went.

As it turned out they were in XuZhou longer than we had anticipated and by the time they were ready to come back it was dark. Driving in our part of the world is not so safe at night. Large trucks fill the highways and those trucks are poorly maintained. Often they travel with no lights at all… almost all the time they have no tail lights. Based on this added danger to the drive I told Hai Tao that if he wanted to stay in XuZhou over night that would be just fine. I had a real uneasy feeling about their driving back that night and had I thought about it a little more I would have insisted they not drive back rather than just tell them they could stay over night if they wanted to. Hindsight says my sense was correct!

At about 11:00 PM and just as I was drifting off to sleep my phone rang and it was Hai Tao. I could hear great stress in his voice and in the background I could hear someone moaning! I knew we had a major problem.

As it turned out Hai Tao and Hank were just coming out of the last tunnel one must go through in returning to Gongyi. In these tunnels there is an area at the end of the tunnel where there is a transition of darkness for some reason. One actually develops as second or two of total blackout of vision. As they came up on this area, a truck (which we later found out was over loaded so only moving at about three kilometers per hour, had no lights on at all and was in the high speed lane) suddenly loomed in front of them, far too late for Hai Tao to stop the van.

Both Hai Tao and Hank’s legs were trapped under the collapsed dash and the engine which had shifted back into the passenger/driver compartment. Hai Tao was able to move his seat back far enough to free his own legs and then get out and help get Hank out of the van.

The ambulance finally came and they were both taken to the hospital.

Hai Tao (above) was released that night with only bruises but was told not to put any weight on his legs for several days.

Hank was kept in the hospital for treatment and when released he had to miss about a week of school.

The blessings in all of this is that neither of them had any broken bones. Hank had a major sprain and bruises. Both of them are now fully recovered and are doing fine!

The next thing we encountered was our first experience in dealing with a traffic accident. My what a maze of paper work, wanted pay offs and various things that are so foreign to the way things are done in other countries. Our van was initially determined to be totaled but later they decided they could repair it although there was no guarantee that it would be 100% serviceable in the future. After it was repaired we realized what they meant by that and now the van can only be used for local runs. There will be no more trips to XuZhou in this van as it is just not dependable or safe now.

We are so thankful for the divine providence that kept Hai Tao and Hank safe through all of this as when I looked at the van I could not imagine how any one could have lived through this accident!

Blessings to you!