Hi There!

We got a donation yesterday from a grocery store that does the occasional donation. That was awesome because it was like meats, eggs, cheese, yogurt and other stuff. It was about a small pallet. We grabbed some for us and were able to give the rest out to a couple of groups. Then at 5pm we had another pick up of 6 pallets of bread!!

Some interesting stuff happened that day. 1st we were looking up directions to the grocery store and our laptop screen was extremely dark (like we couldn't see anything except if it was white) but i could tilt it into the sun and kinda make things out. Well, we were freaked out because we depend on our laptop a lot, but there wasn't anything we could do about it then.

2nd, later on after we had dropped off all the donations and were heading home in the bus, it suddenly stalled on us. I was able to put it in neutral and it fired up again and that was fine. But as i thought about it my mind started racing because i kept thinking... "This is a diesel, diesel's don't just stall... What's going WRONG?? Is it the fuel pump? I can't afford to fix the fuel pump!" etc. etc. etc. Well we got on the freeway and were cruising along and it did it again. So i shifted to neutral and it started back up again. Okay wierd! When i shift back into drive it runs a little then dies again. I'm checking the guages, etc. The battery needle is jumping everywhere! So i think maybe it's the battery terminals are somehow loose and losing connection. But that doesn't really make sense either. So i'm coasting now along the freeway getting slower and slower. When it suddenly starts working fine again and i'm able to drive along just fine. Great! I suggest getting off the freeway to see what's up but Dess says "well if it can just get us home!!" We were about 5 miles from home. So i kept going. As we're going over a big bridge we hit some bad freeway and the bus jostles and the engine cuts out again! AAAAHHHHH! Well this time the light comes on... literally. For some reason this time i notice a little red light over my head come on which is an indicator that the back door isn't closed. I know the door is closed, but this is a safety switch which was installed when it was a bus which won't let the driver get the vehicle going if the door is open. It's a little unnerving when you are driving 55 MPH+ down the freeway and the engine just cuts out, but hey safety first right! Well, at least we knew about this switch because it first acted up back when the bus was being donated to us, but i thought that Josh and i had disconnected it. So i tell Dess (as we're coasting down the other side of the bridge) to go to the back of the bus and work the handle to make the switch go off. Dess is so good, she went back there and started toggling that handle up and down, up and down, up and down until it fell right off in her hands while the door was in the open position!! Talk about fun times! Well, i decide it's time to pull over even if we are still on the freeway. (Just so you aren't worried about Dess falling out the back, we've got a hasp lock on the back door on the outside of the bus which was locked, so the door would only open a crack when she was working the handle!) So i get out and work the handle from the outside until the light goes off again. I get back in and start to drive off. But it dies on my AGAIN!! I'm getting frustrated, scared, etc. I get out and start putting my fingers up there where the switch is. Well, i came to find out that we had disconnected the switch, but somehow the loose wire was grounding out and giving a false signal that the door was open!! So i tied the wire up so it couldn't touch anything and we drove off, everything was fine.

Now back to the laptop, that night when we were home i decided i'd prayerfully open it up and see if it would work or not and see if there was anything that i could visually see would be wrong with it. Well, when i fired it up, the display was back to working fine again! What a blessing.

So today we started the day with a truck full of bread (6 pallets). We had a few churches lined up to accept donations from us, but we weren't sure how much we'd be able to give away. By about 1pm we had given it away to a total of 7 different groups. We even took some by the local Salvation Army Corps, much to their delight because they are having a spaghetti dinner this weekend and the bread was going to be a huge blessing to them. Look at God go! While we were donating to another group, they traded us back some chips and 6 large hams. We looked at the tag on the hams and they were valued at approximately $40 each! What a huge blessing!

Ministry stuff sure has picked up for us lately and we are excited to be able to be God's hands and feet. We sure love serving the local churches and ministry by bringing awesome donations directly to their doors. We are thankful for all the prayers and support which are making this happen. We know it's not us that is making this work. We serve an awesome God and are related to a lot of amazing saints who keep us in their prayers.

P.S. I'd like to make a note about something Dess posted a little while ago... I feel she misrepresented me and my toilet paper preferences :) What happened is that i was having a conversation with someone about how the "cheap" stuff isn't really all that cheap when you think about how much you have to use to clean up after yourself and that i felt that we could buy the toilet paper which is a higher quality and not use as much. That's all i was saying, i don't even think the fact that it's "softer" ever came up!! Just clearing the record.