Let me tell you about our weekend....

On Saturday, we got to experience our first ever collision in Indonesia! (Okay, I guess we've been "bumped" by a scooter a time or two, but those don't count.) It was quite an event. Praise God, nobody was hurt. It happened very quickly but long story short, a guy on a scooter suddenly decided to turn right in front of us and crossed into our lane before we even knew what happened. We were both shocked to find him there where he should not have been and there was no stopping in time. Thankfully, we were going very slow and the guy popped right back up. Whew!

Well, it took a long while to get the whole thing figured out. The scooter guy was pretty unhappy with Sean and another bystander really wanted to turn it into a major ordeal but I was so proud of Sean. He handled it so well and kept a friendly smile on his face all while being told how stupid he was to hit a guy who had his blinker on...even if the guy did turn across oncoming traffic in a totally illegal and careless manner. We've heard from several people who have had the same issues - apparently here the mindset is "the guy with the blinker on can do anything he pleases as long as his blinker is on!"

A rather huge mob of onlookers quickly formed - everybody interested in seeing what the white guy did! It was actually pretty obvious that Sean hadn't done anything wrong and except for the one bystander, everyone else who saw it happen agreed that the whole thing was the scooter guy's fault. The police came. They didn't help much but at least they were there in case that one bystander really did make a scene. (I'm thinking maybe he had a bad experience with a foreigner working for the palm oil or coal mining places interior. He was convinced Sean was out to harm the local ethnic group, which obviously can't be farther from the truth.)

In the end, we helped the guy pay for some repairs on his scooter, even though it wasn't our fault. Like I said, Sean was so patient and kind, even when being accused and even nearly physically attacked by that bystander! Even though he didn't get as much money as he would have liked, the scooter guy was fine - probably because he realized he actually was wrong and didn't deserve Sean's willingness to help pay for repairs. By the end of the whole thing, even the angry bystander realized Sean meant no harm.

I'm so glad the guy wasn't hurt and we feel it couldn't have gone any better. We gave the guy about $30 and everybody walked away happy - could you imagine what a mess a simple litte fender-bender like this would have been in the States? It may be completely backward, but to my mind, it worked out pretty well. No insurance. No lawsuits. Even the police let us take care of it ourselves and backed off when they saw everything was alright.

Praise God for His grace in what could have been a really, really bad situation!