Ministry Update
The Lord gave us a good meeting in Amarillo. Sunday morning there was a girl there who was weeping over her soul, having admitted in the invitation that she was lost. She never did come and talk to us, even though we had a fellowship following the service. I tried to approach her to talk with her about it, but she always avoided me. She did not come to any of the rest of the services.
The drive back home was a most interesting experience. We left Monday night after the service and drove 125 miles before stopping in the parking lot of Flying J for the night. Tuesday we did 791 miles, again stopping for the night in a Flying J just west of Nashville, Tennessee. We got a decent start that next morning, especially considering how late we got in the night before. We planned to fuel once at the Flying J west of Knoxville and then head over the mountains in plenty of time to make the Wednesday night service at our home church. As we moved around the parking lot at Flying J, Sarah was in the trailer fixing lunch for the family and heard a horrid grinding sound. While the children ate their food, I crawled under the trailer to check it out. I found a broken leaf spring on the passenger side middle axle. After several phone calls, we were able to accurately assess the situation: although there was a dealer in Knoxville that had the spring in stock, there was no one that could do the work right away. A call to a mobile RV repairman has still not been answered; the dealer that sold me the part was so covered up that they could not get to it for at least a week; an RV dealer that could do the work was twenty miles east over Tennessee interstate under construction. TN seems to have the roughest construction zones of any of the states that I have been in. Traveling this stretch of construction would have wreaked havoc on any trailer with a broken leaf spring. Things did not look good. I had just finished preaching a message about joy and how God wants us to have joy in our lives in both good times and bad. Now we were stranded in a Flying J with no one to work on our trailer, bone weary from long hours of travel, the heat of the parking lot adding to the potential for irritation: I was being tested. I was reminded of what Moses said to God: “[The people] be ready to stone me.” Had any suitable stones been available at that time, I think my family might have tempted.
After a couple more phone calls, I decided to buy the part and install it myself. It took little time to get the part and after a good time of witnessing to the employees who sold me the part, I was on my way back toward the trailer to change my first ever leaf spring. I found that the parking space that I had chosen was covered in part by a fresh blanket of motor oil, not far from where I had to work. Consequently, whenever I got under the trailer, I had to go around to the other side and crawl on my stomach or back to where I had to work on the broken spring. Every time I needed to get a tool, it was back out again, rocking my body back and forth on my shoulders to achieve some kind of motion. After three or four trips like this, I asked my wife to come out and join me just so that she could hand me tools.
In the midst of this project, the Lord sent along a man by the name of David. He was literally a truck driver who came off the street, initially to buy fuel. He saw that we were working and he and his wife came over to help us. As we worked together, we were both feeling each other out, looking for an opportunity to witness to the other. It turns out, he and his wife had both trusted Christ as Savior many years ago. Hours later, with the greatest help coming from our Lord Himself, we were able to finish the project. I went to pay David and he insisted that I take some money from him. In the end, he gave me a few tools, a can of WD-40, and $240. We were able to get on the road again and finally made it home well after everyone had left the church. It was a trip in which God reassured us of so many truths of His Word, not the least of which is that “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” The total cost of the repair, if you discount the gifts that David gave me, came to less than $40.
We will be in NC for most of the month of May, going to Ohio for a short time around the 20th. We will home the entire month of June and most of July before our schedule gets busy again. Thank you all for your continued prayers.
