May 25th 2005

It's your lucky day! Another update! (Thanks to Miss Judy's encouragement.)

The weather here cooled down really nicely now that we are leaving... We are really enjoying the birds and trees in our neighborhood. We decided to collect all of our pictures of birds and bugs and maybe we'll put some up here for you all to look at.

Today, Dad and the boys worked on making RV hookups. (There's some stories to tell about that...)

The guys have also been doing their best to reinforce 2 major sections of the house that had serious sagging. (More stories!)

Heidi has found her niche. She loves construction work!

At the moment there's a team of 6 people working togther in this nice big kitchen to get some chicken and salmon wraps made up for the road tomorrow.

Sagging upstairs floor

Fixing 1 1/2 inches of sag and rotted out wall/floor

Washing the bus was a fun job in the hot afternoon on Tuesday. The kids had a little bit too much fun.

Check out Jackie's new boots! Instant boots, just add water! and they can't get dirty.

Thanks for all your prayers! One answer to prayer has been the jewel weed that Mom found for poison ivy. If you thought those last pictures were bad you should have seen the rash yesterday. It was twice as bad! (We decided the new pictures were to gross to post here.) After we started applying the jewel weed there has been a marked improvement. PTL!

May 24th 2005

We are all looking forward to a little vacation. Unfortunately only 3 of us are going to CA. and the rest of us are going to KY. We have 2 weddings to attend Saturday!

The bus is supposed to leave Thursday morning and the airplane leaves Thursday afternoon.
We've been experiencing different problems with the bus. It definitely keeps things interesting! Ever since we had the new engine installed we've been having starting trouble. Basic (tool-less) diagnosis told us that it was either 1. The battery/charging system, 2. The starter or 3. A wiring short...

On the drive out here the problem seemed to get progressively worse, every time we stopped it was harder to start. Late Saturday night we made a final fuel stop just outside of OKC, the Lord gave us wisdom...we decided not to turn the bus off. When we pulled into our driveway and shut off the engine early Sunday morning, we never would have guessed that it would be days before it would start again!!! The Lord does love to show his strength!!!

So, what was the problem? First guess was the batts. Upon examination they were totally dead!? When we charged them the bus still wouldn't start, when we took the charger off they were dead again within 3min. It must be the batts. After a few phone calls, a trip to the store and the loss of a large sum of money we had two brand new batteries installed and ready to go...nothing. Hmmmm, maybe tomorrow.

Next day, after much fiddling and wire tracing, we got it started...but weren't sure why (the best kind of problem ). Dad and Annie took it to Home Depot, did their shopping and guess what...it wouldn't start! After another hour of head scratching dad called a friend in Texas who proceeded to explain, in detail, exactly how the starter works and how to bypass/isolate different parts of the system . Viola, it started right up! (Thank you John!)

Now we knew what the problem was, all we had to do was find it. The fun begins (see picture). After several more hours of searching we discovered a sloppy wiring connection on the engine...a five minute fix! Thanks to all of you who expressed concern and support on this issue and also thanks to all those who were praying for us...not that it would go smooth but that the Lord would give us the strength to get through.

We found it!

It's been one week and one day now since we arrived here in Oklahoma and so much has been accomplished. Everyone has worked so hard at the different tasks that need to be done.

Here in OKC they have a "Big trash pick-up" at your curb once a month. (You can put out trash equal to the size of 6 washing machines). We just happened to arrive the day before, and with the neighbors help we got rid of all the junk that was left in the house along with all the carpeting. They brought over empty trash cans, and encouraged us to put some of the big stuff in front of their houses.

After tearing out the carpets all the floors had to be stripped of every nail and all the tack strips from the old carpet in preperation for sanding. This has become a tedious job.

Jackie, pulling up nails and staples (no, he's not sleeping on the job)

All the tools, enough to run a construction business, had to be moved out of the bus and the trailer and into the house, so the livingroom was chosen as the temporary "garage".

The yard, which was bare and brown when we first saw the house in late January, (see The House ) was now beautiful green, but terribly overgrown. For two days the kids worked at cutting, chopping, trimming, and cleaning up the yard. There were many plants growing right up against the foundation.

Here's Annie and Merrie digging away.

The celler entrance had to be torn down because it was all rotted out. Then the whole cellar had to be cleaned out to make it useable, (just in case a tornado decides to come this way). Chris spent several days heading up this project, working on cleaning it all out, patching the cement floor that had been opened to repair the sewer main (before we bought it), and building a new secure door so it can be used for storage. this also gives us easy access to the furnace, hot water heater, and all first floor plumbing which are all in the cellar.

Here's Chris, working in the cellar.

May 23rd 2005

We had a very blessed day yesterday. We visited a small church that was full of friendly people. The Pastor had heard us sing, (They snuck up on our house while we were all wildly singing and working, to welcome us to Oklahoma!) so he invited us up before he preached and the quartet sang Mercy. The congregation demanded more so they sang the Brother Sister song.

The pastor and his wife had us over for dinner after the service and we enjoyed getting to know them better. Neat people!

We did a little site seeing between services, including checking out the pretty canal that runs through Bricktown. (It's less than 10 minutes from our house.)

At the evening service they convinced Dad to get the whole family up to sing. We also heard a young handicap boy, who could not speak, sing Jesus Loves Me in front of the whole church! Wow!

On Saturday we learned a VALUABLE lesson! Being from Southern California we never thought twice about poison ivy... Remember all the weeds we pulled on Monday???

May 19th 2005

We left our house on Thursday and had all the adventure we never desired over the next 62 hours!

Several times we wondered just what everyone who was praying for us were praying for... As I sit here typing this Justin is trying to hook up internet with some rented equipment. He plugged in a transformer and modem and went to get something else, when he came back he saw smoke rising from behind my chair... we soon discovered that the innocent looking outlet (sitting on the floor!) was charged with 220 volts! So much for the modem and transformer... That is a typical occurrence now days!

Not more than 3 minutes after we started out on our trip we heard a CRASH. As we turned a corner a crate of food slid off the ice chest and fell to the floor, breaking the jar of jelly. It took a good 45 minutes with 3 of us working together to get the glass and jelly all cleaned up. In cleaning it up we found out that the water pump on the sink was broken. So Chris spent the next hour working on that.

About 100 miles into the trip we had to pull over because the bus was over heating. This soon became a regular event. We were really bummed that the bus wasn't running better, but we were glad that we were still making progress.

At midnight we were near the Grand Canyon, so we pulled over on an on ramp and settled down for our first night in the bus. Around 5:00am Dad and Chris drove the last few miles while most of the family slept. Friday we spent 10 hours looking at the Grand Canyon and hiking around. It was really neat answering all the questions people asked about our family. We joked about starting a ministry of riding the shuttle buses around and talking to the people at different national parks...

The Grand Canyon was awesome and majestic. It has a beauty of its own. Dad said, "So many people miss the point. This is a giant scar left from a punishment God gave us." It's really comical to hear some people try to explain how it all got there.

We left the Grand Canyon around 4:30 and drove until we hit Flagstaff, AZ. There we took a little detour and saw the house that Mom lived in for 4 years when she was little. We also saw deer, elk, buffalo, and coyotes. After dinner we headed out of Flagstaff and got about 20 miles down the road when Justin pulled the bus over. He knew that something was wrong because the engine was overheating again but this time he couldn't get it to cool down. Chris had spotted something hanging down from the engine while following in the van, and they discovered that it was a broken belt. We had an exciting time pulling a U turn across the median of highway 40! We all survived and the bus hobbled to a lonely looking Shell station. It was quite run down to say the least, but nobody minded that we spent the night in their parking lot. So passed the second night spent in the bus.

Saturday morning Dad and the boys assessed the situation. They discovered that the belt that broke was behind all the other belts, so they had to pull all the rest of the engine belts off to access the one that broke. They also saw that the mechanics forgot to put one of the belts back on... Dad and Mom drove the van back into Flagstaff and got new engine belts. After they got the engine put back together they still weren't sure if they had solved the problem, but by 1:30 we had decided to try it and see how far we could get.

We were thrilled to see that the bus never over heated again all the way to OKC.

New Mexico was nice. Very scenic and we noticed how friendly everyone was that we talked to. We encountered a severe storm while driving through NM. The rain was so hard the windshield wipers were bogging down. There was hail too, and the best lightning storm ever! We could see it all around us. After driving through what we thought was the worst of the storm we stopped for dinner outside of Albequerque. The storm was far from over. We later heard there were 15 tornados in Texas and New Mexico from that storm.

We arrived at our house in Oklahoma at 4:00 Sunday morning. Several people ventured into the house, and soon came back out with looks of horror on their faces. It was a disaster!!! It's a living example of what Proverbs says about slothfulness.

Sunday was spent tearing up the carpet complete with animal droppings, (big and small.) and trying to clear all the nails and staples in the floors to lay out our air mattresses. It was a hard smelly job, but we felt much more comfortable when it was done, even though the house still stank! We took the evening off, sort of.

On Monday we started really working. Each day we've been putting in 8 or more hours of hard physical labor, and then the rest of the evening we've spent doing different things such as visiting with the neighbors, going shopping or going to a lake.

On Sunday we are going to visit a Pentecostal church with our next door neighbors. They have been very friendly and have given us a warm welcome.

It's been the toughest week of our lives, but "in all labor there is profit."

I'd better close for now, there's sooo much to tell, but there's not so much time.

May 12th 2005

Finally hitting the road today!!!

After loading up the trailer with all the tools we took it on a test drive and had to come back and unload some of the stuff from the bus and transfer stuff from the bus to the trailer and repack everything. That's about how all our packing has been coming along. (JK!)

Well, good-bye California, for a while, (Lord willing!)

May 10th 2005

Finally, we are done with the bathroom remodel that was holding us up. Our taxes are finished, the electrical job is done, the bus tanks are no longer leaking, and we have an awesome door to the bathroom in our bus, thanks to a friend!

God's ways are not man's ways, and as hard as we tried to complete things by our deadlines, they've all seemed to fail. He has been testing our faith and trust in Him. It's been a long 1 1/2 months since we had planned to leave, but He had a better plan, and we are glad He gave us the grace to see it.

As we sat around discusing whether or not to drive straight through to Oklahoma, or to stop somewhere on the way, everybody had their own opinion, plan, desire... and it was obvious that we couldn't follow everyone's idea. We were again reminded that God is testing us. He wants to see if we really believe that He's in total control over every circumstance of our lives, and if we will rejoice and thank Him in whatever He has for us.

Here's a couple songs that kind of sum up where we're at right now:

"It may not be on the mountain height, Or o'er the stormy sea.

It may not be on the battle front my Lord will have need of me.

But if by a still small voice He calls to paths I do not know.

I'll answer dear Lord with my hand in Thine,

I'll go where You want me to go."

"My Jesus as Thou wilt, Oh may my will be Thine,

Into Thy hand of love I would my all resign.

Through sorrow or through joy

Conduct me as Thine own

And help me still to say,

My Lord, Thy will be done."

"Loving Shepherd of my soul,

Keep me safe, I love You so.

Lead me where the waters flow,

In Your rich green pastures.

Be my guide I'm in Your care,

Keep my feet from every snare.

I will follow anywhere You call me to go.

Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord,

I will thank You Lord. In Your will I'm content,

I'll not wish for more.

I will seek Your Kingdom first,

I will trust all that You do.

Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord.

I rejoice in You."