Rental Wreck
A local group of men from several area churches walks from one small town to the next, doing evangelism along the way. They occasionally time their walks to coincide with community holidays, such as Arcadia’s annual homecoming parade, to give them a better chance for sharing the Gospel with unsaved people. These men rented our camp for a Saturday to do some training and planning. Several of “my guys” (volunteers and congregants) participated.
The weather was cold (10 degrees Fahrenheit), so I turned the furnaces on Thursday afternoon. They were performing as they should then, but Friday morning our kitchen/dining hall was well below freezing. A stuck gauge on the propane tank had fooled me, and we had run out of propane. Our local supplier made a special trip for us, and we were warming up again by Friday afternoon. When the temperature rose enough, I turned on the water.
Shortly thereafter, not one, but both of the main water lines into the building broke. I found myself knee-deep in water in a manhole, trying to repair forty-year-old plumbing, finally admitting failure well into the night. The weather had turned colder, and the furnace wasn’t keeping up, so we heated the building with a noisy construction heater and supplied water with a 100-foot garden hose.
With little sleep, my wife and I and our children tried preparing an early breakfast and then lunch on Saturday for these men. I substituted corn starch for baking powder in the biscuits, so they didn’t rise. Meanwhile, the chapel furnace malfunctioned, releasing smelly gasses into the building, and had to be shut down. The kitchen’s refrigerator burned out overnight, so we bussed food back and forth to the camp store refrigerator nearby. Our battle is spiritual, but Satan enjoys the distractions that these relatively simple troubles cause.
I was falling asleep, so I went home to take a nap after lunch. While I was gone for my nap, the men shortened one session and sacrificed their free time to take several loads of leaves to our dump site, a job that hadn’t been completed due to the other more pressing needs. Several promised to return later and help with other tasks. (Among them was fellow missionary Jim Wilson.) I found their willingness vastly encouraging!
I still have a broken furnace and refrigerator, two broken water lines, and the unexpected budget-busting propane bill to deal with, but the retreat was a success and God showed Himself faithful to supply all our needs, in this case by the hands of some “walking” followers of Jesus who proved unselfish and understanding.
So, let’s do it again!
P.S. At the time of this posting, the big propane bill has been paid through two generous donors whose unexpected checks arrived the same day the bill arrived. Praise God!
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