Another One Goes By

Whoops… there goes another week. Boy, they sure go by fast. Blink a couple times and you lose one faster than you can say, “no water again.” Yep. We drove to Grants Pass Wednesday after Family Night – got home about 11:30 to a nice warm house because I had Mike go over and change the heat from “vacation” to “we’re home now” (or whatever its called). Anyway, Thursday late afternoon I flushed the toilet (sorry about being so intimate here) and no water. A brief survey of the system revealed smoke coming from the capacitor in the relay box in the well house. It seems the flat piece of plywood I use for a lid now acts like a sieve when it rains. Water got in the thing and water and electricity don’t mix very well. It was easy to fix – for 40 bucks. I just bought a new box and used the half that had the needed parts – and this half just snapped onto the other side that was semi-permanently mounted. It works, but that was one of three.

We go back to GP once a month to take care of things. It seems things always need taking care of. I knew the batteries in the pickup were dead. So Thursday morning I called the tow company for a jump start. I mean, I’m paying big bucks for the towing service so I might as well use it. Right? The guy shows up in one of those big flat bed rigs -- the kind he would use to haul away a monster truck. But he couldn’t get the pickup started. My neighbor had the number of a guy who makes house calls to work on diesels. I called him. Told him the problem. He said there has to be 10 volts getting to the computer or it won’t start. I knew we weren’t getting 10 volts because the thing would hardly turn over. My best new telephone friend said to put a trickle charger on it for as long as possible. So I did. Over 24 hours. Friday afternoon it started as if it had been running forever. So much for the tow guy. That was #2.

So Friday I’m mowing the lawn. Yeah, mowing the lawn. It looked like no one lived there and that is the last thing I want when no one lives there. Joyce comes out and says the washing machine smells funny. Sure enough, it smells like hot wires. I’m not sure what that will be. When it cooled off she was able to finish the laundry. We unplugged the thing but next trip home will be a washing machine repair – or maybe the trip after that. And that was #3.

So these kinds of things come in threes, or so I’m told. So I simply said, “okay, Jesus, this is three” and we went to a movie. We saw Sherlock Holmes. It’s not that great. If you haven’t seen it, take your chances on something else. The scenery sets of old London were really interesting, though.

Family Night is doing well. There were 52 last week. During the autumn months we usually had about 25 to 30. KidZone was up to 19 with lots of workers. Really nice to see this happening. Trevor preached today. He will be doing more and more of that. We have been struggling with our music but today a guy (whom we are borrowing from another church) came with his son and 2 other young people. We had guitars and a drummer! Great. Good. He will come often – maybe every week. We haven’t worked that out yet. It sure gave a new sense of energy to the service.

And so it goes. Blink and its gone. Love ya.