Of Blowouts and Tunnels

Victory Baptist Church.  For forty years, a lighthouse of truth and Baptist witness to the South Carolina low country.  As its address on Parris Island Gateway would suggest, the church has had a ministry to United States Marines, either active duty or retired, for many years.  For their fortieth anniversary celebration, Pastor Chuck Rice decided to invite two former pastors and Evangelist Paul Crow as guest speakers.  It is impossible for me to speak for the two former pastors.  As for me, my trip to even get settled in at Victory Baptist Church was filled with a little more drama than usual.

It seemed like a good idea at the time: leave south Florida on Friday morning and get in to Beaufort, South Carolina a day early.  A chance for everyone to catch their breath before charging headlong into the next meeting could only be a good thing.  As we headed up I-95 north of Savanna, Georgia, however, we heard a sudden pop and the truck seemed to lose power.  Sarah was able to look in her mirror and saw the tread of one of our brand new tires (purchased earlier this year) come flying off.  We had suffered a blowout.  Not to worry, there was a brand new spare on the back bumper.  There are worse things in this world than changing a flat on the side of the Interstate in the dark with spectators flying past at 70-plus miles per hour while your children contemplate playing chicken.

Still, we arrived safely at Victory Baptist Church after 8:00 Friday night.  Everything was set up and ready to go.  Everything except for one thing.  In our haste to get to South Carolina, we had failed to dump our sewage tanks.  The next morning after some inquiries, we decided to dump the black water straight into the church septic system.  That meant unhooking everything and backing the trailer through a small gate.  Everything about the dumping process was pretty seamless.  No spilled water on the church ground, everything going where it needed to go, no leaky black water hoses—it was perfect.  We then maneuvered the trailer back into the parking space.  Not a problem.

Everything was in place, when I began to jack the trailer up off the truck hitch.  (We are in a borrowed unit right now that is a bumper pull, not a fifth wheel.)  Now the tongue was high enough so that it barely cleared the hitch.  As I walked away from the hitch to go to the cab of the truck and pull it out, a terrible noise sounded behind me.  The trailer had shifted and the tongue had come off the blocks where I had left the jack.  The jack had buried itself in the soft, sandy dirt.  Sarah had been in the trailer, and the sudden jolt gave her quite a fright.

In the end, a bottle jack saved the day and got the trailer back to straight and level.  More importantly, God had spared me from what might have been a dangerous accident.  A 10,000-lb trailer jolting and careening around can be dangerous.  God protected us.

The only other incident that happened was that my children decided to begin a subterranean project of tunneling under the church fellowship hall.  Happily, we discovered the project before too much progress had been made and the workers decided to fill the holes back in.  Hopefully, no one will notice at the big celebration tomorrow.  I know now why we usually make it a policy to arrive at the church on Saturday night.

We look forward to the upcoming meeting with Pastor Rice and Victory Baptist Church.  Thank you all so much for your prayers.

Trailer Update

Many have asked about a trailer for our family.  As you may remember, we totaled our previous trailer in March of this year.  Even before our trailer was totaled, we had been looking for a replacement for some time.  After much prayer and search, we believe that we have found the trailer that would meet our needs as we travel.  It is made by a recently formed company named Grand Design.  The model is the Solitude 366DEN.  We have looked into these units for quite some time and have been impressed by the many details that they seem to get just right.

Some have given special gifts toward the purchase of the new trailer, and, although we do not yet have the money to pay for it entirely, we are very grateful for every sacrifice that has been made so that we could get the trailer.  Now we have decisions to make.  We want to make very wise use of the money that God has provided.  Right now, there are eight 2015 models that we know about.  Obviously, with the calendar year coming to a close, the dealerships are very motivated to move their 2015 models.  The 2016 models are already arriving and space will be an issue, not to mention the mounting cost of holding onto a unit losing its value.  Of course, the model number means nothing to us.  The fact that it has sat on the lot for a while doesn’t matter to us.  Here is the important need that we have.  Of the eight 2015 units that we currently know of, we need at least one to not sell until after the first of the year.  God knows which one it will be.  Our current thinking is that if we can hold out until 2016 to buy a 2015 trailer, we will be able to get a better deal.

Everything is in God’s hands.  For our part, we are so busy in meetings right now that we don’t have time to get into a new trailer anyway, even if we had the money to purchase one.  We are seeing the Gospel go forward, Christians challenged, and pastors encouraged.  We are still living in a borrowed bumper pull trailer, on loan from a family in our church.  We are taxing this unit to the limit, already having pulled it from Mississippi to Montana, Montana to Virginia, Mississippi to Minnesota to Florida… You get the picture.  The fact that it is still holding together is a tribute to the power of God very similar to Israelite shoes not waxing old during the wilderness wandering.

As you pray for the temporal needs of our trailer, please do not forget to pray for the greater works: the salvation of souls and the strengthening of churches.  May you all be steadfast in the work of the Lord.

Answered Prayer

The fall season of meetings is upon us, and we are seeing God do some wonderful things.  Last week, we were in a meeting at the Bible Baptist Church of Brookings, South Dakota.  Pastor Ivan Yoder has only been there for a year, but the signs of a healthy church abound under his leadership.  In all, three people were born again during the course of the meeting.  One was saved in the afternoon before the service, and the other two were dealt with in the invitations.  Below are pictures of the two who were saved in the services.

We are currently in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota for our third meeting at the Berean Baptist Church.  On Thursday, I go to Deer River, Minnesota for a men’s meeting that will last through Saturday.  The meeting closes in Ham Lake on Sunday.

After Minnesota, we begin to head south, first to Indiana, and then to North Carolina and all the way to Florida before turning again for Mississippi just in time for Thanksgiving. 

We are eager to see how God is going to work in every place where He has allowed us to minister this year.  Thank you all so much for your prayers.

Regarding the replacement trailer, there are events in motion that are nothing short of miraculous.  When the details fall into place, you may be certain that I will pass them on to you who have prayed so much. 

Born Again!

August represents a bit of slump in my schedule as an evangelist.  Pastors, too, speak of this slump as many of their members are absent from services due to vacations.  A lull in my schedule means more activity in my local church, just as any faithful member would do.  It means being faithful to services and visitation.

Last night, as the groups divided up, I had two very familiar partners, Sarah and Josiah.  We were knocking on doors—cold turkey calling, as some have called it.  Not long into our intended route, we had the opportunity to talk with Tanisha.  Unlike many that we meet, she readily admitted to having doubts about eternity.  In fact, the more we talked about sin, the more visibly conviction showed on her face.  We ended at the cross where the sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary takes care of all our sin—past, present, and future.  There on her doorstep, Tanisha prayed and asked Christ to save her.  Would you pray for her that we would be able to disciple her and see her grow in the Lord?  Her picture is here below.

In the weeks to come, I will be filling local pulpits that are currently vacant in north MS before we head again for another round of meetings.

Please continue to pray about the needs of our trailer.  God knows, and He will provide in His time.

At Such a Time

The greetings of the ancient Persians have always seemed somewhat melodramatic to me: “Peace, and at such a time.”  Times have always been turbulent, but God has always been in control.

God’s control of our circumstances is such a wonderful resting place for our troubled souls so prone to worry.  For my part, the cares of this world have looked a lot like a search for a different trailer, at least in the past couple of months.  We have been looking for a couple of years, actually, mostly to no avail.  The problems are these.

First, if a trailer has room to house a family, it is poorly built.  There is little reason to purchase a trailer that will quickly fall apart as the miles go by.

Second, if a trailer is well-built, it doesn’t have room for four children and is outrageously expensive.  One company makes well-built trailers with space for two children, but their units start at $115,000 and go up from there.

Third, more modestly priced trailers may have enough bunks for four children, but they have very little space for clothes.  Evidently children who camp in these either have to wear the same clothes all the time or else wear little to nothing at all.  I wonder if RV design engineers are reading this.

Fourth, very few units available today have a rear bedroom and a washer and dryer.  Some have a nearly worthless washer/dryer combination unit, but reviews of this setup are universally negative.

Because of these issues, we looked in vain for many months for a trailer that would serve us well in travels.  Then, earlier this year after a lot of searching, we came upon a company called Grand Design.  They make a unit called a Solitude 366 DEN.  As we walked through this unit, we finally found something that would meet all of our needs in a trailer.

Now, a dealership in MN is offering us a great deal on a new Solitude 366 DEN.  We have been able to get together about 2/3 of the needed money for the unit.  We would like to be able to not have to take on another monthly payment for this trailer.  Would you pray with us about this matter?  It may be that God would have us finance the remaining 1/3 of the price.  If so, we would need Him to make this abundantly clear to us.  As we see the situation, it would be best to get the trailer in the next month or so.  That way, we could get moved in before the schedule gets hectic again in the fall.

At the end of the day, though, God is still on the throne…And at such a time.

Answered Prayer

The meeting last week with Pastor Dave Rogers in Willmar, MN, was a good meeting.  Pastor Rogers has been faithful for many years there in Willmar.  Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to tell his people that old-fashioned revival meetings no longer work in the 21st Century.  They just kept on bringing their unsaved friends and relatives as if preaching still worked!  Not surprisingly, we saw two trust Christ as Savior on Thursday night of the meeting.

The dynamic at work in Bro. Rogers church is an often repeated one.  Whenever lost people sit under the sound of the Gospel for consecutive nights, they often trust Christ or leave angry.  Such is the nature of an extended meeting.  After reading stories of days gone by, some today are decrying the use of evangelists because we are no longer seeing the numbers of people attend the services as we once did.  Consider the facts of the Scripture.  The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes it (Romans 1:16).  Satan is powerless to prevent the Gospel from doing its work.  If he is to prevent men and women from trusting Christ, he must resort to other tactics.  His tactic of choice today seems to be keeping men and women from hearing the Gospel.

Why do so many invitations to come and hear an evangelist preach go unheeded by lost men and women?  The answer is that a simple invitation for a sinner hear to the Gospel represents an attack on Satan’s domain.  It is spiritual warfare.  The good news is, Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.  Still, every Christian needs to bathe invitations in prayer and understand that God’s power is desperately needed on something as simple as an invitation.

When we do reach out and get lost people to sit under the sound of the Gospel, the result will often be conversion.

As we traveled across SD last Saturday, I was nervous, given our experience with wind the week before.  We prayed that God would control the wind and keep us and the borrowed trailer safe.  He answered every prayer.  In over 500 miles of driving, the trailer did not so much as sway one time due to wind.  A couple of hours after we arrived in SD, the winds picked up again and have been gusting and blowing ever since.  In fact, I think I just saw a downwind chicken lay the same egg three times!

Windblown

Since we began, April has traditionally been a busy month for us.  Accordingly, we find ourselves in a cycle of traveling and preaching for several days on end.  Our first trip took us from IN to Willmar, MN.

We are currently traveling with a borrowed trailer from a family in our church.  The unit is a 30-foot bumper pull trailer in which the children sleep on two different beds, one a couch fold out and the other a dinette fold down.  While much smaller than what we were used to, this trailer is a great blessing from the Lord. 

As we traveled through IL, we faced some tremendous cross winds.  Yesterday, we passed a tractor and trailer that had blown over in the wind.  As we drove, a particularly strong gust of wind struck the truck and trailer.  The trailer fishtailed and whipped violently in the wind.  At one point, both tires on the one side were off the ground.  Despite all the excitement, we were able to make it safely to Willmar, arriving this afternoon. 

As for our search for a trailer in northern IN, we were disappointed by the lack of options that we have available to us.  Today, there are far fewer companies that make a unit that will work for us than there were when we first started in evangelism.  When we had nearly despaired of finding a trailer that would serve us well, we were introduced to a new company that has been in business for only a couple years.  They make a unit that will work for us.

Please pray that God will give us wisdom as we continue our search.  Please also pray that the Lord will bring in the finances that we need to pay for the unit.  So far, we have a little over half of what is needed to purchase the trailer outright.

Above all, though, please pray for souls to be saved.  Pray that Satan will be hindered as he tries to distract men and women from hearing the Word of God.  Pray that God’s power would be on us as we minister in every church.  Pray that the Word of the Lord would have free course and be glorified. 

And, as always, thank you for your prayers.

Totaled

The insurance company got back with us this week and gave us an amount for the trailer.  They will be giving us about $1,000 more for the trailer than what we paid for it originally.  All in all, I am very pleased with the way State Farm has handled the claim.

As for a new trailer, Sarah and I will be touring trailer factories in northern IN trying to see where we go from here.  We would covet your prayers for God’s wisdom as we look.  We are trusting the Lord the settle the entire thing.  So far, He has worked everything out very well and we are actually excited to see what He will do in the future.

Thank you so much for all your prayers.

Oops!

Well, it happened.  In nearly twelve years of pulling the trailer, I have never had a major accident.  Until this past Monday, that is.  Traveling like a barn sour horse, we came out of Taylors, SC, and entered the automotive quagmire of Atlanta, GA.  A wreck on the northeast side delayed us for a couple of hours so that by the time we hit the intersection of I-20, it was officially rush hour.  It took us about four hours to get from the Mall of Georgia to Six Flags.  (We stopped at neither place, but for those who know Atlanta, these are familiar landmarks on the outskirts of the metropolitan area.)  After making it through the traffic to the west side of the city, I realized that we needed to stop for fuel.

Motorists who have not pulled a large rig such as a forty-foot trailer rarely appreciate the difficulty that larger vehicles face.  Just any filling station won’t do: evangelists need one with lots of space in which to maneuver.  Thankfully, filling stations have taken steps to accommodate the needs of larger vehicles, some of them even creating designated lanes for RV’s.  It was into one of these designated lanes that I pulled.  It was late and we were in Villa Rica, GA, not far from the AL state line, ready to be rid of GA traffic for the night.

As I pulled into the RV lane of this gas station, I quickly realized that not all RV lanes are created equal.  Not all are endowed by their creators with ample space for large RV’s.  In fact, this one seemed to have been designed for smart cars more than for any sized RV.  It was especially unsuitable for a truck pulling a trailer, no matter what the sign said.

Not to worry, though.  I have been pulling large trailers for twelve years, right?  When we were done fueling, I had to back up to reposition the trailer in the lane so that it would clear when I pulled through and made a left hand turn to return to the freeway.  No problem.  I kept the rig on the right side so that my trailer would follow and miss the large concrete bumpers erected to protect the narrowly placed pumps.  Textbook.  One learns a few things through experience over years of repetition. 

In front of me sat several cars parked in designated parking areas—areas that some engineer is probably still laughing about because there is no way a large RV can make the turn out of the RV fueling lane with those cars there.  I had to carefully watch the cars in front of me so as not to hit them and watch in my mirrors to make sure that my trailer cleared those awful concrete barricades.  The barricades were quite war worn, bearing the the scars of several victories in previous encounters with different RV’s.  I had missed every obstacle when I began to turn the wheel to the left.  The rear of the trailer pivoted to the right as I did so and, out of my line of sight, struck the right hand barrier.  We did not so much as feel the impact, because we were going very slowly.  Nor could we hear anything, but as I completed the turn, I felt a slight pop.

The barrier had torn the back part of our trailer to bits.  Although it was towable, it is still not livable.  As technicians at the local RV service center examined the damage, they used the word totaled a lot.  Of course, the service center pronouncing the unit totaled is not the same as the insurance adjustor announcing the unit totaled.  We will have to wait and see what insurance says.  In the mean time, we are in the busiest time of our year without a trailer.

Please pray for us as we seek the Lord’s will concerning a replacement.  Some have already offered to help fund the new unit.  We are so thankful for the willingness of God’s people to help me the need.  Whatever happens, we are confident that God will provide.

Running Water

What a busy schedule the Lord has given us so far this year!  We are very grateful to see how He is opening door after door and blessing our ministry in every place where we have been.

Currently, we are in the state of North Carolina where we have nearly a month of meetings in different places in the western part of the state.  You may have seen the news that cold weather has descended upon the eastern seaboard to such an extent that many inhabitants are longing to return to the days of global warming.  The cold has significant effects on anyone wanting to live in a trailer.

A couple of days ago, the temperature was predicted to drop into the single digits.  It is customary in the trailer to leave the water running a trickle in order to keep it from freezing during nights when the temperature dips below 32 (Fahrenheit).  The problem is that the temperature can drop so low that even running water can freeze.

So to allay the problem, we actually winterized the trailer by using an air compressor to blow the water out of the lines.  In the meantime, we moved into the church’s mission house so that we could appropriately bathe and hydrate ourselves.

Then we moved on the next church, Emmanuel Baptist of Kings Mountain NC.  There we tried to hook up water only to find that all the outside spigots had frozen during the cold snap.  Not to worry, though.  After about an hour of working with a cheap Wal-mart hair dryer, we were able to get everything thawed.  Or at least, so it seemed.  As the outside temperatures climbed in the mid-40’s, the janitor and his family arrived to clean the church before the Lord’s day.  What did they find?  The pipes burst inside the building, necessitating that the water be cut off again.

So we still have no running water.  But then again, neither did much of humanity in days gone by.  It makes me sort of wonder, Do wells freeze deep in the ground so that you have to break the ice off them before you lower the bucket?  If conditions continue as they have been, I may soon be in a position to find out.

Strengthen

Acts 15:41 “And he went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the
churches.”

As an evangelist, this ministry of confirming the churches is a major thrust
of my ministry as I travel. I want to see souls saved and churches strengthened.
December was a great month for us financially, compared to years gone by.
Two things helped us out tremendously: first of all, several weekend meetings
during the month, and second of all, a special financial gift from the
Maranatha Baptist Church of Ripley, Tennessee. For the first time in many
years, we had a little bit of financial breathing room during the Christmas
season.

January found our family in Silver City, New Mexico, ministering in the Calvary
Baptist Church for four weeks. Would you pray that God gives them a
pastor? They need wisdom as they seek the Lord’s will in this matter.
February has us all over the country from Texas to North Carolina ministering
in a different church every week. Please pray for souls to be saved and
churches to be strengthened. It is wonderful to see those prayers answered
as we travel.

Many of you have prayed about our trailer situation in the past. The unit we
are in is wearing out and in need of replacement. Yesterday, for the first
time since we have been looking, I received some encouraging news as far
as a trailer replacement. Please pray for wisdom for us to make the right
decision in this regard. I am now convinced that if we get the right trailer,
we may be able to keep it for the next ten years instead of purchasing a different
one every three or four years due to wear and tear.

Thank you so much for your prayers.