My husband and i were on a holiday to the West Coast of United States last year. We visited the Grand canyon, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Los Angeles was the home of my cousin and we were visiting them for the first time. My cousin took us out to some of the local attractions. The Venice beach was a popular tourist spot and quite close to my cousin's house. We decided to visit the beach on our own. Since we had a GPS there was no problem finding our way back to their home, we thought. We parked our car at a parking bay across the beach and walked to view the beautiful coastline. The beach was framed in a brilliant landscape of distant blue mountains and a curving coastline. The beach had also been planned to include play areas for children, skating rinks and shops. A live music band was also playing. We kept walking for almost 2 hours. By evening 7:30 we decided to return and to our dismay we could not remember the starting location. All the streets looked identical too. The two of us gave up searching after twenty minutes and decided to ask someone for directions. I prayed almost instantly to Swamiji and Sai baba to help us find our way back.
LA was known for its mafia and it was growing dark and bereft of people. We walked around and my husband saw a middle aged woman standing outside her apartment with a dog. We explained that we were lost and sought directions from her since she was a resident of the area. We could have called my cousin but i did not want her to panic and rush down. The GPS had been left in the car and that was precisely why we could not locate ourselves. We had become so dependent on the GPS that we had failed to make our own observations on the location and landmarks.
The lady was British and had settled in USA. She recognized our inability to identify the place where we had parked our car. She immediately offered to drive us around until we could identify our parking spot. She brought out her car and asked my husband to occupy the front seat. Her dog and i took the back seats. We drove around for the next 20 minutes unable to locate our parking spot. I thought hard and suddenly the image of boats parked near the car flashed across my mind. I had made a mental note of this landmark even as we walked out from our car. I clearly remembered this landmark and described the location to the lady. She thought for a moment and said she thought she knew the place. What a relief it was to hear her say that. She drove us to a spot almost 2 kms away from where we had met her. As she turned into one of the side streets, i saw the canal and the boats floating on the water. Yes! we had found our parking spot. The lady waited until we confirmed that our car was indeed parked in the bay and only then left for the night waving us good bye.I was amazed by the fact that a stranger had bothered to make this extraordinary effort to help us find our way. I gave her a warm hug and thanked her profusely for her act of kindness. I also thanked Swamiji for sending this samaritan in a timely manner. With a guru and god like Swamiji and Sai Baba with us, we can never get lost. They will pull us out from the depths of danger and restore us to safety every time. Praise be unto my Sadguru Sri Saipadananda Radhakrishna Swamiji and Satchitananda Samartha Sadguru Sainath Maharaj.
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