It was our first trip out in the bus in this much heat. I'd been working on the bus all week, just fixing little things here and there, and working on the generator. In this heat, it was our lifeline – it made the air conditioners work! We left Dean's and picked up Butch on the way to Bakersfield. In Gorman, about halfway to Bakersfield, our generator quit working. We pulled into the parking lot of a local diner and began working on it. The rest of our families got off the hot bus and decided to try to find food…but all the businesses in town, even fast food, were closed! We found out later there was e-coli in the water, and they shut the town down for the entire weekend!!
Well, the generator was dead, so we opened the little windows and vents on the bus and drove on to Bakersfield. It was quiet…which was good, because hot air floating around would have made it even more unbearable…
By the time we hit Bakersfield, it was 112 degrees outside, and even hotter in the bus. We went directly to the church where we'd be setting up that night and playing in the morning. Instead of immediately opening the bus and moving equipment in, we all went into the church to get out of the heat. They were gracious enough to turn on the air conditioning and fans. Once we somewhat recovered, we brought in our sound equipment and set it up, did a sound check and headed off to Hodel's. Now, if you've ever been to Bakersfield and you've never been to Hodel's, you're missing some GOOD food!!
On Saturday evening, we parked at Bill's house and drove around looking for spark plugs for the generator. The old ones had fouled out, so we figured new ones would fix the problem. Needless to say, they didn't. But being plugged into Bill's house gave us air conditioning all night and good, cold showers, so we were quite happy.
The next morning, we went to the church and had a great service. It always seems to go that way when we're having hardships! We sang and preached in the morning, and people responded to the altar call!
We left there and went back to Hodel's. Yes, we love that place. On our way to Hodel's, however, we made a phone call to a local pastor friend of ours in town, Pastor Troy Morris of New Beginnings Church. We invited him to lunch, and during the conversation, it happened to come out that our generator was dead. He immediately said to bring it to his shop after lunch! So, we ate a great meal, and proceeded to his shop. Pastor Troy and a man from his church worked on that generator for about 2 and a half hours, and when they were done, it ran better than brand new!
With air blowing cold, we went on to the church we'd be singing in that evening. The last time we'd been there, the pastor had been healed from the effects of a recent stroke, and we were excited to be back! We set up our equipment, did a sound check, drank some tea and got dressed for the service. The service was flat out awesome! Pastor Troy and Pastor Eastwood, pastor of Liberty Tabernacle, showed up, as well as someone from the church we went to that morning! The people got into the music, praising and worshiping God, and when Wayne preached, he was fired up! It turned out that this was a fellowship meeting, so there were quite a few pastors in the crowd, and they really got into the service. People responded at the altar call, and the anointing was strong throughout.
When the service ended, we drove our nice, cool bus to Sonic (another favorite of ours) and had some dinner. Now here's where things take an interesting turn…
First, I had to send my food back twice because they gave me something completely different from what I ordered, so we stayed there a lot longer than usual.
Second, on the way back up the Grapevine, Dean was driving…and we overheated the bus. It happened right at the entrance to a rest stop, so we pulled in, and as we did, the engine died…so we coasted into the first parking spot, which turned out to have a water hose bib right at the front of the bus. We couldn't get the bus's engine to turn over, so we were quite worried. We had a one gallon antifreeze bottle, and we ended up putting 20 gallons of water back into the bus. Once it cooled down, the engine turned over just like it'd never had a problem. We got in, drove to Butch's, dropped him off, and headed toward San Bernardino.
We were headed North on the I-15, going down the ramp to the South I-215 when we spotted something terrible…a car was upside down next to the road, and there was debris everywhere. It had rolled five or six times before coming to rest on it's roof. We saw a large white thing in the road (it was 2:00am by now), and tried to stop but couldn't…we ran it over. Thankfully, it was only a large white pillow. We got the bus pulled over to the side of the road, and Wayne and I ran over toward the car. The wreck had happened just seconds before, and the people inside were crawling out. The girl in the passenger side crawled out, dazed and hobbled into the middle of the road! Wayne ran over to her and carried her back and put her on the bus. The guy in the driver's side crawled out and came running over as well. We called 911, and it took them almost a half hour to get there! In the mean time, an EMT was on his way home from work and stopped to help. He told me later that when he saw how badly the car was smashed, he expected to see bodies in the car, but the people literally walked away with scratches! We talked to them as much as was possible about God, and made sure they knew they were spared. We don't know their names, or why they were so miraculously spared, but if you would, say a prayer for them the next time you're talkin' to God.
As you can see, God has perfect timing. We may have had troubles, but God had it all in hand, and put us in a position to help some people He was concerned about. Trust Him and don't let the hard times get you down, He has you in His hands!
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