The End of the Trip

     In Guatemala I had another one of those odd answers to prayer like I blogged in "Why I Stopped giving God Advice".  In general I think it's best to avoid countries whose name begins with the sound "guat".  It sounds vaguely like something you might be doing later. We took precautions while in Guatemala to avoid getting "traveler's distress".  We packed Pepto Bismol, ate only in well known restaurants and drank only bottled water, but towards the end of the trip we both succumbed nonetheless.  Reed and another inspector came down with it a few hours after eating lunch together. Even though they had eaten at the same restaurant earlier in the week without incident and hadn't ordered the same thing for lunch, the timing was too close to be coincidental.  That meant the one weekend we had to spend in Guatemala was spent mostly in the hotel room.
      Because I took the same precautions as Reed and ate lunch only at the hotel, I wasn't too worried. Besides, my system hovers over the other end of the regularity spectrum and gets worse when we travel, apparently my colon thinks it is on vacation too.  In my case Connie isn't short for Constance, it's short for constipated.  I practically have to take a laxative to pass gas. I had a more gradual onset of Montezuma's revenge (or whatever forgotten Mayan ruled that part of Central America).  At first it was a refreshing change.  I'm the only person I know who looked forward to that part of a colonoscopy prep.  By the Tuesday before we were to leave, it was unrefreshing enough to keep me awake part of the night.  The next day the cramping had stopped but, well but(t)'s the issue... I couldn't sit down comfortably in any position.  I would have given most of our remaining quetzales for some Tucks pads but we couldn't find any and, believe me, we looked. We hardly found any drug stores and the few we found had only Pepto Bismol and Preparation H, both of which we already had. High school Spanish didn't cover that particular dialogue and I certainly couldn't pantomime the complaint, so we gave up.
     The next day we would have 20 hours of sitting in airplanes and airports so I prayed that I would not notice the problem.  It seemed like a harmless and appropriate prayer at the time, but the answer turned out to be one of those weird ones God frequently drops in my life.  Early the next morning I was "sitable" but didn't know how I would do in the long haul.  As I was lined up for one of the customs procedures involved in leaving the country I picked up my briefcase, which was heavier than normal because of the borrowed laptop, and tweaked my back.  The spasm stopped just short of the kind that take your breath away.  Problem solved.  I was no longer noticing the nether pain.  Reed carried both briefcases after that.  Our long day of flying went uneventfully.  I was reminded of God's goodness to answer prayer and His inscrutable sense of humor. That was the end of the trip.  I can't wait to see how God answers some of my other prayers.