You know those McDonald billboards that you see when you are driving that tells you how many miles it is till the next McDonalds?

Yeah, well, I have always had a certain dislike for them. I don’t know exactly why, but it has always confused me why anybody would need to know where the next McDonalds is.

Well, until my first week here in France.

I was at the mall, looking around, trying to get familiar with the town when I decided that it was time to head back home. However, my phone was about to die, and I didn’t know the way back home GPS-less and mapless…

So, as my phone died, I bought a cord to charge my phone with my battery pack. So all is good.

Or so I thought.

When my phone turned on I needed a code to access my SIM card and therefore my data… which I didn’t know.

But I needed my data to get home.

So. I did the only thing I could do. Try to get home.

My GPS app, Waze, was still working for some reason (nothing else was), and it took me on the LONGEST route possible to get home.

Knowing no other way to get home, I followed its direction. I went from wide roads that eventually shrank to small farm roads that were as wide as a car. A French car at that. Buildings and shops to farmhouses and fields. So I started asking God for a sign. Any sign that would help me get home.

I wish that I had been calm enough in that moment to just stop the car, breathe, get out, and look at God’s creation. It’s INCREDIBLY beautiful here, but in that moment I was too stressed about getting back home to enjoy it. One day when it gets warmer, I want to try to find the route I took and stop on one of those roads.

Here are some pictures I have taken the time to take on my way somewhere: 

I took road after road of what Waze told me to take. Every now and then I came to a bigger road and took that. Waze freaked out.

Eventually, I saw a sign that said McDonald’s. 5km. And I was saved. We live about five minutes from a McDonald’s! Waze kept freaking out, trying to get me to take the tiny farm roads, but I followed that sign.

It took me a little while, yet I eventually made it home.

I cried once I got home. That was good though. I needed to let all that mess within me get out.

Stèphane was the only one home at the time, and he somehow deciphered what happened through my tear-filled English speech. I knew from this experience (and now other experiences) that my host family does really care about me.

This was not the most encouraging way to start off my first week in France, but it sure does make for a good story!