Click! My eyes flew open. It was pitch black inside the camper shell, a moonless night in the Honduran mountains. Someone—or something—was out there! I shook my husband, Dave, awake.
“Honey, what was that?” I whispered.
“Probably just an animal,” he said groggily. “Who knows what lives out here.” He fished a flashlight from his pack and shined it out the tiny window. “See? Nothing.”
He fell back asleep. I tossed and turned in the steamy heat, pleading with God to give me peace of mind. Was it just my fear of the unknown? Dave and I had traveled to the small mountain village of San Luis in the wake of Hurricane Fifi to help relief efforts alongside our missionary friend Gary. With limited space in the village for volunteers, Dave and I chose to sleep in the back of a pickup covered by the camper shell. Maybe I was so tired I was hearing things.
Click!
“There it is again!”
“Kay, go back to sleep,” Dave mumbled, rolling over. It took me another fitful, fretful hour, but finally I drifted off.
By the time we returned to Ohio, I’d dismissed the whole strange incident as a case of nerves. I forgot all about that night. Until later, when Gary returned to the States.
“Have I got a story for you,” he said. “A month after you left, something peculiar happened. . . .”
One of the villagers in San Luis had come into the church, wanting to devote himself to God. “He told us that one evening, he’d gotten drunk and decided to take out his anger over the losses he had suffered on some of the volunteers,” Gary said. “He armed himself with a pistol and approached a pickup with a camper shell. His intent was clear.”
I gasped.
“The strangest thing happened,” Gary continued, “and he took it as a sign. When he pulled the trigger, the gun jammed. Not once but twice.”
