Divine Intervention

On Friday, we left Nashville for a long roadtrip to Picayune Mississippi. Our plan was to drop Dave off in New Orleans for a conference and the kids and I would leave Mississippi the following morning and take the next four days getting across Texas. Dave would fly to Amarillo to meet us.

God had a different plan for us. The trailer blew a tire in Laurel Mississippi, about 90 miles from our destination. Dave looked out the window and saw rubber flying from the left side of the trailer. There was no good way to pull over and change and left tire on the freeway. Blessing #1 was the trailer has two tires on each side so we were relatively stable. Blessing #2 was there was a truck parking area one mile from the blow-out, which we made it to safely.

Dave was able to get the tire (actually the rim and small bits of rubber) off, but our jack could not get the trailer high enough to put on the spare. In drives blessing #3. A gentleman by the name of Terry happened to stop at this parking spot (he wasn't even driving a truck!). He asked Dave if he needed help, to which Dave declined. Nonetheless he brought his jack over to our trailer and was able to raise the trailer enough to get the spare on. During the time of his helping us, the kids thanked him profusely. He replied that he liked to help people because you never know when the shoe will be on the other foot. He told the kids that maybe they would help his grandkids some day. Just before Terry left, he told us he was not a perfect man, but that he knew Jesus and that was why he helped people.

While changing the tire, Dave noticed the other tire on the left was extremely worn on the inside and looked like it would also go at any time. Even the two right tires were wearing on the inside. Blessing #4 is that the next exit had Break-Away RV which serviced RVs. Bubba, the mechanic, looked at the tires and told us the axle needed to be aligned, which they did not do. He also found a tire store about 5 miles away that had the four tires we needed in stock. While Bubba was looking at the trailer, we went into the air-conditioned office. There we met Kathy Lee, the office manager. When we left, she went out to her car and got a CD for us. Kathy Lee used to be a Christian Music artist and the CD was her singing. It is great and a great testimony for Jesus.

Blessing #5 was at the tire store. Jeremy and Bob were very helpful. The tires were changed immediately and Jeremy spent quite a bit of time on the phone trying to find a place we could get the alignment done (not an easy task). It turns out Jeremy's real calling is sculpting (web site to follow).

Of course, since the blow-out happened on a Friday, we couldn't even talk to a mechanic until Monday. The trailer is currently at Happy Camper and we are awaiting news on how long before we can leave Mississippi/Louisiana.

While our itinerary has changed (Grand Canyon will have to be another trip), we feel so blessed by how obvious God made it that we should stay together for this portion of our trip. We were hoping to be able to be good witnesses on this trip and were blessed by several great witnesses that God put in our path in Mississippi!