Exit 244B

It had been 18 years and 24 days since I'd last seen my friend Kim. She and I roomed together at Christian Life College from 1991-1992. The room arrangement must have been ordained of God since, although we are very different in some ways, we "clicked" right away. 

She came to St. Louis to be my maid-of-honor December 3, 1993, and that is the last time we saw each other... ...until December 27, 2011, when we agreed to meet at the Olive Garden in Modesto. 

We were coming from Fresno in the south and she was coming from Stockton in the north. At one point she called and said that she was sitting in a traffic jam on Highway 99. We waited for her in Olive Garden for about 30 minutes. The traffic was barely moving and at times it was stopped completely. After quite a while longer, she determined that she was near Manteca Exit 244B. 

We made a plan. She would exit there as soon as possible and we would meet her at the Cheveron station. A strange place to have a reunion, but Kim and I never did settle for the status quo. Why would we want to lounge around in an Olive Garden when we could stand beside gas pumps? 

Time has a way of changing people. Since 1993, Kim served as an AIMer to Bolivia. There she won a young man by the name of Marcelo to the Lord. Then we wanted to marry her...and she conceded. 

Bill and I have also been AIMers, plus worked in home missions, and of course spent many years evangelizing. 

Yet, Kim and I are still basically the same people we were 18 years ago, a little crazy, but also attached for life to Jesus. We opted for lunch at a Thai restaurant, where we posed with plastic fruit on our heads. Hey, why be dignified when in the presence of Kimberly Ann (Geissler) Burgoa?! Our time together was way too short. (Why are my reunions with "old" friends always so brief?) But it was great and it gave us one more bizarre memory to add to our collection. 

Who knows where we will meet again? Maybe it will be in Chisinau, Moldova. That would be appropriately out-of-the-ordinary. But regardless of the place of meeting, I just hope it is not 18 years from now! 

The cause of the traffic jam? An out-of-control tractor trailer caught fire and jammed under an overpass bridge. It took many hours for authorities to move it out of the way so traffic could flow freely. Miraculously, the driver survived. http://www.news10.net/video/default.aspx?bctid=1349214347001