April - June 2022
Returning to Georgia from North Carolina in mid-spring, we began preparing ourselves and our rig for a four-month-long journey cross-country and back. The Lord gave us a couple of opportunities to visit our granddaughters while we were in Georgia. We threw a surprise birthday picnic for my younger sister and enjoyed a rare time of family fellowship. We met with our doctors during our time there and even had lunch and connected with our Pastor for a few minutes one day. We then attended a missions conference in Alabama, and from there, we headed back to North Carolina. Our son-in-law is the Pastor of one of our supporting churches there, and while he and our daughter were on a mini-vacation, we babysat for them, “our grandson,” filled in for him, and reported the ministry.
During our time in North Carolina, we took our truck to a shop for an alignment and unexpectedly discovered the right Tie Rod needed replacing. From North Carolina, with a new Tie Rod and surviving a week with our two-year-old grandson, :) we turned our rig towards a meeting in Kentucky, and while on our way, we dropped down into Chattanooga, Tennessee, and reported to a supporting church there. We then continued to Kentucky, where we boondocked at a supporting church for a weekend. That Sunday morning, we drove to Illinois, attended a missions conference at a supporting church, then returned to Kentucky. However, the Pastor at our meeting in Kentucky that Sunday evening needed to reschedule us.
We then headed towards a meeting in Northeast Pennsylvania, only minutes West of Trenton, New Jersey. While there, God graciously granted Donna the special blessing of being with her mother on Mother’s Day for the first time in over forty years. On the following Sunday, God gave me the privilege to preach and present our ministry at a church near Donna’s hometown, where her family has had connections in one way or another throughout the years. Also, the Sunday School teacher who led Donna to the Lord back in 1968 was an Aunt of the Pastor’s wife of this church. Furthermore, a couple of Donna’s brothers attended the service with us, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our families.
From Northeast Pennsylvania, we set our sights on a meeting in Northern Michigan on our way to southeast Nebraska. In northern Michigan, we were privileged to meet the new Pastor and his family and many new members of a supporting church, and it was an honor to preach there again after all these years. The following Monday morning, we traveled south for a while, dropped below Lake Michigan, turned west again, and continued to Nebraska. Meanwhile, while doing my usual walk-around inspection of our rig while traveling through Iowa one morning, I discovered two tires that needed to be replaced immediately. However, the nearest tire shop on our route was over an hour away. So we hovered ourselves above our seats; it lightens the load, you know? Lol, as we made our way to the tire shop, where we were grateful for a McDonald’s located across the street from the shop, amen? Our meeting in southeast Nebraska on the following Sunday morning was unique as it was a new church plant at the time they took us on for support many years ago, thus making us their first missionaries to take on. Praise the Lord!
Following the Sunday morning service in Nebraska, we drove three hours and fifty minutes north to our evening service in South Dakota. By God’s grace, amazingly, we arrived in time to set up camp, shower, and take a 10-minute cat-nap before preaching, amen! And from there, we continued north the following week, where we attended a Missions Sunday Meeting in North Dakota, merely ten and a half miles south of the Canadian border. The following Sunday, we reported to a supporting church in the morning on the southwest corner of North Dakota and presented the ministry in another that evening.
As the spring season evanesced and the summer season loomed, we were rolling westbound across the vast nothingness of northern Montana when suddenly our engine lost power. After doing all we could to get it going again, we were obligated to call for help and then towed back to a shop in the nearest town where we are presently broke down.
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