the back lane came alive, half moon whispered 'go'

to my small but patient audience:

sorry about the delay. you should all know i'm a procrastinator. i have no other excuse. but i have been working on getting this updated. i'm skipping ahead to an amazing experience we had, but then i will go back and catch you guys up on what's been going on so far.

we spent this past saturday night in the kingdom hall parking lot in high level, alberta. we got in quite late and figured that was the best way to get to the meeting in the morning. which we did. and met every witness in high level, it felt like. it's a congregation of about forty and they are very friendly. the couple that lives in the hall, the dillons, had us over for lunch. (coincidentally, turns out they are related to my red-headed britta). then we packed up and headed out of town on our way to hay river, nwt, at about three.

we got about an hour down the road - that would be a whopping 60km in the van - when the van completely lost power and monica pulled over to the side of the road. we couldn't get her started again. she was turning over but just not starting. we had a full tank of gas. so we pulled out the manuals and started diagnosing the problem. we did some tests, including pulling off the hose to the fuel pump and making sure it was working. that was fun. sprayed gas in monica's face. we were still baffled after an hour. we took a break for dinner and to collect our wits, at which point we prayed for help and enjoyed an egg salad sandwich.

we played with the engine for another hour, then we gave up and tried calling ama. unfortunately we were out of cell range. we were starting to think we could camp there on the side of the road until the people from high level came by on their way to their assembly. that would only be a week. (ack.)

just at that moment a car pulled over and two guys got out to see if they could help. one of them said he'd worked with cars quite a bit so he offered to take a look. we showed them what we had done and he started playing with some of the wires. they mentioned they were on their way home to calgary from toronto by way of hay river. we were laughing about the detour we were both making and we asked what they had been doing in toronto. they said they just took a course there. a little later in the conversation i asked the one guy what kind of course they had taken, and he says, it's called a ministerial training school. i nearly died. mine and monica's eyes bugged out of our heads and we laughed hysterically. none of us could believe it. when i think about it now it's crazy that they even stopped at all because we were just sitting in the van at that point. we didn't even have the hazards on because they don't work. God really takes care of his servants, hey? even lowly little us.

so the rest of the story is that we think the coil is dead and we had the van towed back to high level. we're back camping in the kingdom hall parking lot awaiting the part. it should get here tomorrow morning from edmonton. craziness hey!? turns out these guys, phil and vin, are from the mandarin congregation in calgary. i've probably seen, if not met, them before. we were joking that this was a sign that they were going to be sent to pg to help the mandarin group get started. vin did mention that russel reed had told him that one of the places in canada that needs help with chinese is pg. neat, hey?

anyway, we're doing great. the congregation here is taking excellent care of us. and hopefully we'll be in hay river for the meeting tomorrow night. if the van doesn't get fixed tomorrow we're thinking we might stick around here and see if we can go to the assembly in yellowknife. we'll see how things go.