From bad to worse

7/10/12 Tuesday

          When I finally made it home late yesterday, after running all over to get a new wet and dry vacuum, to replace the one that just died, and running errands for one of the widows we help, I rushed to wash my hands for the dinner Cherie was preparing. There was no water. None, Not a drop. Nuts. Now Casey had called a week or so before, and gotten real nasty about the fact we still had not paid our bill for the new water well pump he put in. In that conversation he threatened to come and take the equipment back. I explained that the person who had offered to help with that and to invest in drilling a new well for our RV park, had changed his mind and left us hanging. I also let him know that Cherie started a new job so we would be able to start making payments. So my immediate thought was that he had done just that so rushed out to the well and see.

Nope, the pump was still evidently there but it did give me a chance to look at the job they had done. What a scary looking poor job of wiring this is. The connector to the relay was just sitting unconnected on top of where it was supposed to go. I suspect this probably contributed to a brand new pump going bad. It looks like it had just enough contact to activate the well but…well just barely. The other wires where about as haphazard a wiring job as I have ever seen. These guys did not even take the little amount of time required to simply twist the strands together. I also know that poor connections can cause an electric motor to overheat and fail too.

Regardless, we are without water on the farm, or in the house. I will go out and collect all the containers I can find and then fill them with water where ever I can locate a spare spigot I can use. There is a meeting of the prison ministry council this morning at a church in Midland so I suppose I can find clean water there. This morning I got some of the rain water we collected to use for flushing the toilet. Cherie asked “What are we going to do?” and I didn’t know what to say other than “We will trust in the Lord”. That is hard to do sometimes. We just had our church friends spend over a thousand dollars to fix the truck and others gave Cherie a car to drive, so I am not at all comfortable asking for more. It makes me feel like a bum as it is. I was asked about applying for work and explained that I have put my application in a few places. “Not one of them called me back” I said, and explained why that was. “Just imagine what they thought, when on an application for a maintenance man they read my last job was over eleven years ago and it was CEO of not one but three companies, all of which I had founded and built from scratch”. In fact my only job since 1989 was building and running my companies and then there is this eleven year stretch of no permanent work.

(This is the car I was in and then pronounced dead at the scene. November 2001)

The fact that I had an accident and could not easily fulfill most job requirements, especially at first, does not help instill confidence in hiring me. Now I do work, and have worked several part time jobs, ranging from cutting down trees, mowing lawns, and securing properties for financial institutions, along with restoring that 1929 model AA truck. Plus I work on this farm every day. Work till I hurt too much to work, lay down, take a pill, and go to work again. And I work in the ministry too, helping others where I can, doing handyman jobs for no charge and spending time in jails and prisons whenever I can. However, I suspect that there are some who see me as some kind of a bum, sponging off of others all the time. This is a hard place to be.

I have a dream, a dream of building a farm that is self-sufficient, and part of that dream involves turning this land into a profitable income producing property. An RV park is a vital part of that plan, and the most viable one that can quickly produce revenue. Do I abandon that dream and just spend my time making small change so others won’t think so poorly of me? Or do I press on towards the goal I have set before me, the goal of being self-sufficient where we don’t need to beg for help every time something goes wrong. I will press on. Quitting is not a part of my make-up. I will succeed, with God’s help. But getting there will require overcoming many obstacles and hardships. I must run to town now, and get some water on top of two meetings. There is the prison ministry council and the Ministerial Alliance, a regular gathering of pastors and those in active ministry. Both are today.