Jesus Our Help

Our brand new (to us) camper van (Phoebe) spent 64 days in the shop this summer. The problem turned out to be an intermittent short in the main wiring harness, but it took forever to agree on this diagnosis and then perform the repair. All the intermediate attempts would have been very costly to us, but the wiring harness is covered under the powertrain warranty, so we got out for much less than we expected.

Our other big news is that I (Bob) finished up at Trinity this past week with a final sermon and a wonderful party. Thanks again to all who came and expressed such gracious appreciation. Thirty-one years is a long time of ministry and it’s beginning to feel a little strange to be done, but it’s great to know that God has called us to an exciting new phase of our lives.

Putting those two things together, it’s time to hit the road. This coming week we are spending three days at a campground doing a second “shake down.” (Merriam Webster, definition 6: “a testing under operating conditions of something new, such as a ship, for possible faults and defects and for familiarizing the operators with it.”)

On September 8th Gail will be heading up to Minnesota to do trauma training at a church there. After the training it is possible that she and Katrina will go to Hawaii to do trauma care and training for a coalition of churches.

Then, in the last two weeks of September, we’ll be taking Phoebe on the road for some family time. We hope to see Bob’s sisters in North Carolina and Georgia, our daughter Hannah and her family in Pennsylvania and our daughter Bethany and her family in New York state. In October we’ll turn back south and head to Florida where we’ll work with teams in Ft Myers continuing to rebuild after Hurricane Ian.

As I write this we’re also watching Hurricane Idalia closely to see what impacts it has and to look for opportunities to respond. As many of you know, our first priority for domestic responses is to EFCA churches and as of this writing there don’t appear to be any impacted churches, mostly because the area where Idalia has come ashore is lightly populated. But it’s still a fluid situation. We’ll keep you posted.

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