Transporting a team around the roads of Nogales is no easy feat. A Christian man in Tucson has a big 12-seater van that he rents out to teams for such purposes. We have lovingly christened this van with the name Bertha. She's an old girl on her last legs, and sits unused for long periods of time between teams. I don't know about you, but I had never given much thought about where the term "Pack Rat" comes from. But apparently they are real animals and they love to steal treasures from their habitat and hoard these in their elaborate nests. When preparing the van for our team, the owner found a large nest built behind the dash of the van, packed full of wood, grass, fabric and whatever else the rats could find in the vicinity. Many wires under the hood were bitten clean through. It took Fred a fair amount of work to clean Bertha out, put her back together and get her in some kind of driving condition for us.
As Fred handed over the keys, he gave our driver instructions about adding power steering fluid periodically and explained other idiosyncrasies about keeping her running. Thankfully no one succumbed to the noxious smoke that spewed from her ventilation system as she chugged down the highway toward Mexico. What Fred didn't know was that the water pump was also ailing. Old Bertha limped into Nogales and our missionaries were able to locate a replacement water pump on the US side. Pastor Jesus arranged for a Mexican mechanic to install it a couple days later and so Bertha continued to transport the team to the worksite and back. Well, ALMOST back. When we got close to home, everyone would have to get out of Bertha and walk up the last long hill to the hostel because old Bertha could not make it up with all our weight!
Leaving Nogales, waiting in line for the border crossing, we had to send a couple of teammates on foot in search of a service station to buy more power steering fluid because she was running seriously low. The temperature gauge was going up from all the idling, but when we turned the engine off, Bertha was reluctant to start again. So we decided it was best to keep her running. Our teammates came back with two bottles of steering fluid. But if we stopped in one place too long, people would cut in front of us from the other two lanes. So we continued to inch forward as one of our guys walked backwards while adding the fluid under the hood. This process had to be repeated with the second bottle before we finally crossed the border! Believe me, there were many whispered prayers for old Bertha to get us back to Tucson and miraculously she did not leave us stranded on the side of the road anywhere.
