Day 7 - Adventures and misadventures in Ft. Stockton

We left Van Horn, Tx early on Friday morning with visions of arriving at my dad's house in Houston by dinner. As we drove I recalled the last time I saw my dad at his house. It was July 12, 2007 and we were driving away to go to the airport to move to Albania. I will never forget the mixed feelings of excitement and sorrow. I was so excited to be moving to Albania b/c I knew that that was where God was calling us, but as I watched my dad wave goodbye with tears streaming down his face, I was sad to leave not knowing if I would ever see him again.

So, it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to arriving in Houston in just 8 hours to see my dear family.

However...
just a few minutes outside of Ft. Stockton, Texas the engine light/overheat light came on the dashboard of the RV. After 20 seconds the engine shut off automatically. Thankfully, we were able to pull off the highway in the shade of an overpass. So, here we are in the middle of nowhere, without a local cell phone, and not much knowledge of the mechanics of an RV. So, we prayed. After a few minutes the engine cooled down sufficiently for us to limp into Ft. Stockton. Actually, it was an enormous blessing that we broke down when we did, because if you have ever travelled from El Paso to Houston you will know that after Ft. Stockton there are a few hundred miles of not much of anything except tumbleweeds and open plains. We sure praised God for His perfect timing.

Thanks to the handy GPS that Kris's dad lent us we were able to find an RV repair place. However, because the RV has a diesel engine there was only one guy in the town that could take care of our RV but he was already booked for 3 days and could not take a look at the RV. We just kept praying. We knew that God knew our (tight) schedule better than we did and if He wanted us in Houston He would provide a way to get there. We pulled into the parking lot of the local Auto Zone store with a nearby Sonic (woohoo!). Hey, we still gotta eat, huh?

How good God is!!! The people at Auto Zone were so amazing. They called all over town for us to see if there was any other person that could help us out. There was one man who worked on diesel engines for an oil plant or something and he said he would come help us out after he got off work.

So, 3 hours later Gilbert showed up to see what the problem was. Yeah Gilbert!

3 hours and 3 more trips to the Auto Zone later Gilbert was able to fix the problem sufficiently enough to get us to Houston (we were praying so at least). He discovered that among other things the engine has overheated b/c of the 3 belts that were supposed to be driving the fan to cool down the engine only one of them was remaining and even it was not the right kind so it wasn't working efficiently. He replaced the belts and did some other things (you can tell that I am not fluent in "enginese"). All I know is that God sent Gilbert to us in our time of need. He was so kind and gracious to help us out - and he only wanted $40 for his time (we had anticipated him to charge us up to $200). We couldn't believe it! Along with our deep gratitude and a testimony to how God used him in our lives we gave him $60.

So, we were on the road again. It was after 6 p.m. and we had 7 hours to go before we arrived in Houston. We thought we would just drive through the night and arrive in the early morning.

However...

Just a few minutes outside of Ft. Stockton we heard this loud banging sound. I looked out the window and saw the awning (that is usually wound up and secured) on the side of the RV flapping in the wind and pulling the whole thing off the RV. So, we stopped on the side of the highway to see what we could do to remedy the situation. Unfortunately we could not unroll the whole thing and re-roll it b/c the latch to unfurl it was broken. We actually were laughing at the comedy of the whole thing. It just seemed too funny. We prayed and thanked God for these "light and momentary afflictions". We found some handy-dandy duct tape and taped the whole thing together and to the side of the RV. The other thing we discovered was that the the front windshield on the left side was gradually becoming looser and unseating itself. It was so loud in the RV that we could hardly hear eachother talking in a loud voice.
The wind was SO strong that I thought Kris was going to get blown off the top of the RV. The girls had a grand time playing around the area we stopped at. There was an old (early 1900's) historical stagecoach stop monument there (kind of funny that our "coach" or so they call RVs stopped there). They are so creative and took this great photo of their shadows (from left to right - Whitney, Sierra, Breanna and Kaitlyn).
Well, we got the awning partially secured but we had to drive under 55 mph to keep it from blowing away, the window from popping off, and to keep the engine from overheating again so our arrival time in Houston was looking like 3 a.m. After that long and tiring day we just figured that we would stop along the way and sleep and start again in the morning. However, we could not find a place to stop except a rest stop. We actually got the girls all ready for bed and quieted down and then Kris (very wisely I might add) decided that there were too many "creepy" people lurking around the rest stop and so we took off again. I was feeling really sick to my stomach and Kris was so tired, but God brought us safely to a small town an hour away and we just pulled up to a well lit, empty parking lot and crashed.

So ended a strange day filled with answered prayers.