the riddle… The car I was sitting the test in had the possibility of a recall, yet as it turned out the reason the owner was never notified was because his car didn’t have the recalled problem.
Since his car didn’t have the problem and thus never notified, there was no way to know that a letter was needed. In fact just a few weeks earlier my previous instructor didn’t even comment about the car.
The car was legit. The instructor, suspect.
Annoying.
Kellie and I are up to our eyeballs in boxes as we prepare to move flats!!!
I will be posting more about our church as we get back up and running in a week or two, but as for now you can pray for our transition as we up and move.
Some Church News Bits:
We had a ton of new visitors this week. They seem to be having a better experience now that there is heat again. Actually everyone seems to be having a better time. This past Sunday people seemed in no rush to go and many stayed for several hours after church.
Our banner sign was destroyed in a windstorm last week (it is always something) but we should have a brand new metal sign up this week.
There have been some amazing answers to prayers in our church these first 3 weeks of the year. Specific prayers clearly and obviously answered. This has been a great encouragement to us all that God is still moving and hearing prayers.
Hope this New Year finds you well. I will be writing next from our next flat… until then.
For those who don’t know, I had my second attempt at my UK drivers test this week. All I can say is the following riddle in response to the question everyone is asking.
I did not Pass
I did not Fail
I was there
What happened?
(The Driving Standards Agency, a fiend not a friend.)
Sunday morning about 2 hours before church was to start on the 6th of January, in the cold Scottish winter, our temporary heater stopped working. The building’s heating system had been vandalized over a year ago and the estimated fixing costs were between £15,000-30,000 (30,000-60,000US) from a heating expert we paid to look over the damage. The owners of our building said they were not going to fix it and we would have to make do, and so we gave up on the old system until we could purchase the building.
This autumn, Tim Shirley got us a great deal on a jet engine looking burner, which took a bit of the edge off. By November our jet engine was not quite getting the job done and so thanks to a generous gift we were able to have 4 radiant heaters installed. We would not have been able to make through the cold of November and December with out the combination of the two heating systems. But last Sunday the jet engine died, and I watched our people (whom I affectionately refer to as “the frozen chosen”) shiver and attempt to sing, but the cold was too much for most.
By God’s hidden hand of providence, and without warning, the current building owners sent some men over to the church and they repaired the vandalized chimney system. This gave Wade Thompson the inspiration to call together a work day to reassess the buildings boiler system and see what needed to happen in order to get it fixed. We assessed 6 things that needed to happen.
We are just a bunch of missionaries, without much money, and without some of these professional skills, and so we prayed. We prayed for the wisdom to understand what was normally out with our understanding. We prayed for God’s aid. We needed a miracle.
Nobody worked harder than Wade Thompson, he called people together and he lead the charge back into the boiler room, and single handedly took on the dirtiest and most difficult task of getting in that chimney and clearing it all out. I remember after several trips to the hardware store and hours and hours of work finally hearing him celebrate from the chimney “I see day light!” With those words we all gained hope that we just might be able to get this system working again.
Andy Ashworth was there every moment rebuilding the door and the door jam which had been completely destroyed by the vandals. He had help the first day with Mike Libolt and on the second with Guy Taylor. Those guys had to fight through obstacle after obstacle but finally we got the door fitted and fixed.
After several phone calls and testing many points throughout the system we discovered that the radiator system was not drained and instead still had the chemicals preserving the pipes from rusting and needing to be refilled, saving us a couple thousand dollars. Again good news raising our hopes for the impossible… working heat for our building for Sunday.
Stephen Irwin, among other things, got the gas up and running for us as well as continually getting us quotes from professional contractors for the water and electrical system.
Speaking of the Electrical system, we discovered some major obstacles with the wiring. When some previous electrical work was done, the wires for the boiler pumps caught on fire and were cut. Quoted repair costs £668 plus tax, without any guarantee that anything would run after their work. We had until the end of the night to decide if we needed them or not. To make a long… very long story short. We kept discovering things were not as bad as we thought they were… and late last night got power to everything that needed power. I remember the moment Wade and Andy and I were in the boiler room looking at old switches from the 30’s or something. The power should be working but nothing was on, and then Wade flipped some random switch that shouldn’t have done anything and the pumps whirled to life!!! We all jumped like 3 feet, then stared at each other and started celebrating.
So then we flipped the switch to turn on the boilers… the fan clicked on… we had wide eyes as we looked at each other waiting for the flame to come on… It didn’t happen. What? It should be working… We tried it again… fan…off. We stood there for a few minutes thinking what else could possibly need to be done. Occasionally we would push the button again simply because we had no other ideas. And then one time, the fan didn’t shut off and we looked inside the ancient boiler and saw a tiny flame which grew and grew and grew until it blazed. We laughed, we cheered, we took pictures, we thanked God. I have been walking around on cloud 9 ever since 11 last night.
This was God giving us insights. This was God’s people’s generosity from the other side of the world coming at the right time. I want to say a special thank you to the generosity of God’s people at Christ’s Church in Federal Way, Washington, and at the 3rd Christian Reformed Church in Lynden, Washington, who gave sacrificially and generously towards our heating crisis. Thank you. I also want to thank God for the team of missionaries whom God has brought together here in Glasgow. This was true Synergy with our team doing together that which exceeded the sum total of our talents and abilities. Thank you for all your hard work.
The fire still burns!!! There will be heat for Sunday!!! God is glorious and I am completely wowed by his sovereign hand at work globally to bring us to this point the very week our temporary heating system died.
God you are amazing! You have done great things for us, and we are filled with joy and awe! Thank you.
