Coincidence or.... UMMMM.....

A while ago, I spent almost the whole day at the office of our internet provider. I had noticed that we could receive emails but could not send any out. This went on for about four days.
So I decided that I should call the support center and see about getting help to fix the problem. After several phone calls, costing me 4000 Rwandan francs ($8 or 6 euro’s) I had had enough and it was time to just go to the office and find a Technician willing to help me.
The timing of this inconvenience was just great as we were in constant communication with people from the States about our Kibuye project. They had been waiting on info from us that of course now had been delayed for a few days.
I grabbed my computer, jumped in the car and headed off to town. When arriving there was no problem getting some one to see me. I was ushered right into the wireless internet managers office. I explained the problem I was having, a bit confused she asked me to show her. I fired up the computer and showed her what I was talking about. She asked me if she could try some thing.
Taking the computer, she sent herself a test email, much to my surprise it went through no problem. She said: ”See there is no problem… “ Now wait a moment how is that possible? So I tried to send a few test emails to several people on my contact list. Nothing would work. I tried again with the managers address that she had typed in before, again no problem, it went through. I explained to her that every time I sent her an email it would work but not with any one else in my address book. She did not seem to be interested in the problem. So getting a little louder I politely demanded to see a technician that could help me.
After waiting ten minutes a very nice girl arrived. Once again I went through the whole spiel of what was going on and once again the computer was taken “to try some thing out”. After checking some of my settings, the computer shut off. I thought OH (@*#&$%^!!*^) guess what… the battery died and I had left my charger at home. After all I should have known that a little help would take more than 2 hours right? (The life of my battery)……

The nice lady says; ”How about you go home and call me, then I can walk you through some stuff.”

I’m thinking ‘yah right’, like I am going to spend another $10 on talking to you on the phone. So I suggest that I will run home and grab the charger, this way I can insure that the problem will be fixed today and hopefully before I leave the office a second time. Thank God she agrees!
We set up the computer and I went to plug it in, and……. Wouldn’t you know, I forgot the adapter! (For those of you who don’t know this… the entire world has different outlets than the States has.) Now I couldn’t even plug my computer in. At this I gave up, I sat in the chair with my hands on my head not knowing if I should cry, or curse… Luckily the Technician saw my despair, if you would call it that. She said to worry she would be right back. In about 20 minutes she returned with an adapter. Oh I could have kissed her, but I didn’t.

We then searched for the problem. She checked all the settings on the computer, ran some tests and said; “I don’t understand this, your settings are correct.” Still not functioning properly, she decided to put in the settings of another outgoing mail server. All of a sudden the problem had reversed itself, now we could send but not receive. What the hec was happening, we were both confused. We tried to log on a few more times and over and over would receive the same error. We were both stuck and just talked about what was happening and how we did not understand it. By this time it was late and we had spent many hours trying to find a solution. Should we try again tomorrow hoping for better results? This could not be happening, I thought; ”Lord we have so much communication that needs to happen. Please let us figure this thing out!” I tried to connect one last time hoping for a miracle, and a miracle I got.
Both sending and receiving worked with no problem. We looked at each other in shear amazement, wondering what just happened. “It worked, try it again”. I said. We sent out test after test and every time it worked as if nothing had ever been wrong. We just started laughing, I thanked her and went on my way back home. My biggest thank you went out to God! No explanation of how, first it was working then it was not then it was again. Coincidence or….. UMMMMM… Things like this happen far too often here for it just to be a coincidence. I am not one to quickly say there is a demon in every bush, but after a long day like that you better believe I was telling Satan how much he sucked and that God was better.