Tomes Brothers Ministries

Weekend of January 20, 2008

2008-01-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

As promised, here is the quick and dirty on this past weekend!

Long before the weekend of ministry happens, things begin to happen. First, hotel rooms had to be booked for everyone not sleeping on the bus. Sometime during the week, all the guys fast and pray for a day for the upcoming trip. Last week, Butch stopped by and installed a new door inside the bus for one of the bedrooms. On Friday, Casey (one of our roadies) and I went and checked the oil and added a gallon, checked the transmission fluid and added a little, added a gallon of gear oil to the rear end (that was fun...*sarcasm*), checked the coolant, took the bus and filled the diesel fuel tank and the generator gas tank. We then went to the store and bought breakfast foods, bags of chips, a couple cases of water and a few 12 packs of various sodas to accommodate the tastes of the various bus riders. Casey then stayed the night on the bus, polished the wood inside, washed the windows and vacuumed.

First thing Saturday morning, I drove down early, and Casey and I loaded my clothes and music equipment into the bus, then washed the bus from top to bottom. Once everyone who was meeting us there arrived, we drove out and picked up Butch and Ruth, then headed on up to Taft, CA. It was (thankfully) uneventful, and we arrived, set up, did a sound check, then found out they made dinner for us! So we ate delicious tri-tip and fried chicken. The ones who had hotel rooms went thereto, and we met in the morning at Jo's for breakfast.

The service that morning was AWESOME!! God moved mightily. I was having throat problems, trying to get over a cold, but I sang fairly well. Now remember, we don't charge a fee for coming, we just ask for a love offering, and we set up our merchandise table in the back. The church took up an offering for us, and it was the largest they'd ever taken up. Now remember back to my previous post, we owed these pastors a sizable amount of money because of our agreement for the bus. We gave them back the money from the offering to put toward the debt, as was our agreement before going there. They then forgave our debt to them!! God is so good!!

From there, after we broke down all of our equipment and packed it away, we drove to Bakersfield, and on to Hodel's. Yuuummmmyyyyyy!!!!! After eating, we got ahold of Pastor Troy Morris of New Beginnings Church, and went and saw his new church. It was absolutely amazing... One of these days I'll blog about that as well, it's a story all it's own!

We then moved on to the church where we'd be for the evening service, Grace Christian Church in Bakersfield. We set up, did a sound check, and sang and preached yet again. It was another great service! My voice was nearly gone with the cold I had, but I pushed hard and was able to sing. But when I went up for the altar service, I opened my mouth to sing...and a horrible noise came out. My voice was completely gone. As of today, it's even worse!!

Afterward we packed up the bus and said goodbye to Pastor Roger Sadbury. When we tried to start the bus...nothing. It had power, but it seemed to me that it wasn't really in neutral, even though the gear selector said so. Wayne got into the side compartment, and saw the gear selector actuator wasn't completely connected to the gear selector anymore. So he manually moved it through it's gears and back to neutral, and fixed the actuator arm. The bus of course started instantly! But then Dean couldn't get the maxi's to disengage...not until we had full air pressure.

We left, following Pastor Troy Morris to In&Out Burger, where he bought all of us a burger for the road (Thanks!!!!). We left there and drove home, dropping Butch and Ruth back off at their house. Once all the stuff was off the bus, I parked it out back, and Casey and I plugged it in. I then took Casey home, and went home myself.

I know, I know, it's a long post for such an uneventful weekend, but I wanted to show you a little of what goes into one short, fairly local trip. There's more usually, bus maintenance, call after call to get bookings, calling around to get rates for hotels, coordination with pastors, band practices, etc etc. It really is a lot of work. No, that's not a complaint, we do it happily, knowing it's what God called us to do.

Check out our new album when it's out, "Just Until Jesus Comes." The title track is our testimony!!

Until next time, I'm signing off...goodnight!!

Update on 2007

2008-01-21T16:28:00.000-08:00

Well, much has happened since the last time I posted...I know, I'm a bad man. But I promise, I will try to keep this blog up from now on!!

So what has happened? Hmm... Let's recap:

In 2007, Tomes Brothers sustained repeated attacks from the devil, both financial and physical. He wore us down and tried to get us to quit, but this is the ministry that God called us to, and we renewed our commitment to continue ministry.

First, we were preparing to take a trip, and the engine seized. It was going to cost an astronomical amount of money to rebuild, but God provided another way out. There was a bus parked at the Taft Church of God, which had been sitting for two years. It had the right engine, so I contacted the owner. They donated the bus to the Tomes Brothers, as long as we would agree to provide the pastors of the church with a certain amount of money. When Butch and I went to pick it up, we knew we'd have to figure out how to drive it out of the yard where it was. We installed two good batteries, turned on the switch and went to the rear starter switch. I touched the switch and it started INSTANTLY, it didn't even crank over!! I drove it out of the yard, and it was towed home on a flatbed. Pastor Gary, the owner of G&S Truck Repair in Bloomington, CA and his guys removed the engine from that bus and placed it in ours. Yes, it still cost a LOT of money (which we're working on paying off now), but God will provide.

Second, we got the bus back from G&S with the fresh engine in it the day before driving to Klamath Falls, OR. It smoked a lot, but we figured it would clear up. Now keep in mind, we're not diesel mechanics... It got worse and worse, and finally it stopped running about an hour outside of our destination. A man from the church we were going to knew a great diesel mechanic, and we had it towed to him. We did the morning and evening services the next day and rented two cars to come home. The entire right bank of injectors were frozen, so we had all the injectors replaced and a turbo added. Yes, the mechanic checked with Detroit and made sure it was supposed to have one, and had it matched to the injectors. Dean and I rented another car and drove up, picked up the bus and came home in one turn-around trip. It doesn't have quite as much power as the old engine, but it runs GREAT!!

Third, when the bus was at G&S for some maintenance, the throttle stuck open...they put it in drive, and ruined the rear end. It destroyed the ring & pinion gears. So, they had to put another in for us.

Fourth, when we were on a trip, heading toward Sanders, AZ, we had a tire blow out near Barstow. We limped it in to have it replaced. Five long hours later we were on the road. Yes, five hours. They couldn't get the old tire off the rim, and when they did, they couldn't get the new tire on. They ended up having to sell us a new rim and tire.

Fifth, with the economy dropping, engagements dropped to virtually nothing as well. Tomes Brothers do not charge a fee for singing, all we require is a love offering. But for some reason, many pastors don't feel they can afford us. This is something I don't get...

Well, what does all this mean? Where does God get the glory? We now have a new engine, automatic transmission and rear end. Yes, the entire drive train is NEW!! Also, Pastor Troy at New Beginnings Church in Bakersfield, CA donated a beautiful red paint job, giving the bus a great look. The Tomes Brothers went through and had their logo placed, and added some silver paint. Jamie Conrad came by and donated his talent, and airbrushed the eagles on the sides of the bus, and it's absolutely beautiful. Now, as long as we keep up regular maintenance, we'll have a bus for a long time.

So we're excited, God is moving and doors are once again opening.

A Note About This Blog

2008-01-21T16:26:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Thanks for visiting the blog. I'm going to try to keep it up after each trip, so come back often! I'll report on the stuff from the mundane to the hilarious. Let me know what you think!! Yes, eventually the blog will be the basis for a book about the Tomes Brothers, so if you know of any other stories I should include here, let me know!!

Steve

Weekend of June 25, 2006

2008-01-21T15:32:00.000-08:00

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!