Both the months of January and February have been blessed months for us. We had a great meeting in Beaufort, South Carolina, and from there we went back to our home church to preach a special Sunday in north Mississippi. From there, I went alone out west to southern California and Arizona. We saw three trust Christ in CA. The church in AZ was a brand new church plant, and we had a high attendance on Wednesday night of the meeting with 44. Though we saw no one saved in that meeting, the outreach into the community that came about as a result was a tremendous help to the church. Now, we are in lower Alabama and God is working here as well. In every church, we were privileged to see the power of God at work as the Holy Spirit works in concert with the Word of God to bring people to a point of change in their lives.
After the financial strains of last year, the Lord laid it on the heart of a church to take up a special love offering for us. That meant that this past January was the first January in nearly 12 years of full time evangelism where we got a paycheck every week of the month. That generosity of God’s people, combined with the normal meetings that we had, served to make up for the financial deficit of the last year. We are rejoicing in the goodness of God.
The Preacher reminds us in Ecclesiastes 10:18, “By much slothfulness, the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.” After being out of my trailer for a couple of weeks—since last month about this time—I began preparing everything to go to lower AL. The problem was that while I was in the Southwest, a tremendous cold front hit the area of MS where we live. Although I had drained the water heater and the water lines of the trailer, the unit still sustained damage of which I was unaware. As I was getting ready to go, I noticed that there was a major rupture in the water system of the trailer, a part of the system that had not drained properly when I had tried to winterize it earlier.
I knew that if the problem were not fixed, I would hook the water up in AL, only to see it cascading out the wall of the unit. The alternative was living in the trailer without water, always inconvenient to say the least. It would also have to be fixed before we left, since the nature of RV parts stores is that they close early on the weekend when everyone is traveling (and breaking down). It is probably a giant conspiracy that involves hotel chains, wrecker services, and RV campgrounds as well, and they all get part of the kickback. For example, you break down on the side of the road, can’t drop your unit there, so you must call a tow service. Because your home on wheels is now incapacitated, you have to find a place to stay. If it is a small repair, you can stay in a campground over the weekend until the parts store is open on Monday. If it is a large repair, you can stay in a hotel and pay for your unit to be fixed at the unbelievable rate of $130 an hour labor(average), plus parts.
Fixing a trailer is always a difficult proposition. Not that the work itself is difficult, but the parts are notoriously hard to find. So it was that I began my epic parts hunt. The whole thing works like a teenage scavenger hunt in some ways, except that I end up spending a lot of time and money before everything gets done. Lowe’s did not have what I needed. Wasted trip number 1. From there, it was off to a little hardware store that specializes in parts that Lowe’s doesn’t carry. Two men look at what I need and proceed to try to rig something from their limited inventory. (Just wrap this up with duct tape and it’ll git ‘r done!) After purchasing their rig and taking it back to find that it did not work, I realized that I had just made wasted trip number 2. From there, it was driving across the county to the RV store, cringing all the way at their inflated prices and hoping against hope that this would not be another worthless trek. When I got to the store, they assured me that they had the part and actually gave it to me. Success at last—or so it seemed.
When I got the part home and installed it, I was unnerved by the fact that it fit very loosely. Sure enough, when we turned the water on, the awful sound of water greeted me and I knew that the new part failed to hold. Disappointed, I went through the neighbor’s yard to pick up the various faucet parts that had been strewn all over it by the escaping water pressure. Wasted trip number 3.
By this time it was after 1:00 in the afternoon and we still had about six hours of driving ahead of us. It was now time for a change of strategy. I called ahead to the pastor and asked him to get the entire assembly that had gone bad. After going to the RV parts store and taking a picture, he purchased exactly what I needed to get the problem solved. We finally got in to Mobile around 9:30 p.m. (There were other setbacks which would only take more time to tell.) As for the part? It took less than five minutes to get it installed and to get water to the trailer. So we are in our home on wheels again and everything is going well.
Moral of the story? You must be constantly working on your house to fight the inevitable onslaught of decay. If you have a house on wheels, the work load at least doubles. Some time ago, a woman noticed our rig and commented to her friend, “My, that must be the life!” Oh, if she only knew!
