We were up and about, getting an “early” start on our travel day.  Once we got ourselves situated, I went outside to take a look around to ensure that everything was OK around the rig.  We have never had an issue with staying in Walmart parking lots, but we know that we always have to be “prayerful and careful”.  While I was outside, I noticed that there was another motorhome that had pulled in and parked for the night.  It was certainly not a campground, but RVers have this certain camaraderie that surpasses specific locations.  It was still early, and no-one was outside of that motorhome, but I quietly walked over and slipped one of our ministry cards in the edge of their door opening.  Maybe, we will see them one day on the road, but for now, we just planted a seed.

We got us a little breakfast and we were about ready to get back on the road.  As I walked around our rig making final checks, one of the truck drivers from the night prior was pulling off.  I knew without a “shadow of a doubt”, that truck driver had visited our website; as he drove by, he gave a big smile and initiated a wave that is not customary from truckers to RVers.  His countenance had changed.  My prayer was that the love of Jesus Christ has penetrated his heart; maybe I will see him again one day and he will remind me of our encounter.

We got back on the road about 8:30, heading West on I-10 towards Arizona.  That was some beautiful country driving through New Mexico and in to Arizona.  There was a lot of “nothingness”, but there was also plenty to see of God’s handiwork.  I kept telling Adriene to grab the camera and take a picture, she would say “Take a picture of what?”, and I would just point “that way”.  I would say, “Yes I know, we have been this way before, but right now, I don’t know what we got a picture of last time”.

It was a very nice travel day making our way through Tucson, Arizona, and in to the Phoenix area.  Since we were planning to stay in the area for a few days, I had made a prior reservation at Destiny Phoenix RV Park in Goodyear, Arizona.  It is on the outskirts of Phoenix, and not too far from Adriene’s sister in Avondale.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we drove much further than expected for day one, so we had actually arrived in Arizona a day earlier than expected.  I asked Adriene to call the campground and see if we could come in a day early; they said “no problem, come on in”.  Typically, if it is not the prime summer season, most campgrounds will have some openings, so last minute “drop-ins”, or early arrivals in our case, are usually not a problem.  Our campground wasn’t to far off of I-10, so we hit a couple main thoroughfares and before we knew it, we were pulling into Destiny Phoenix, off of Citrus Boulevard.  As we pulled in, it appeared that we made a good decision with this park, it looked pretty nice.  Some campgrounds use “creative photography” in their advertising, but this one made a great first impression.

I pulled up beside the office, and went in to get us checked-in.  The receptionist was having a bit of a challenge finding my reservation; come to find out, their online reservation system was not “talking” to the front desk system, so I had to go back out to the rig and get my reservation number to “help her out”.  Once I gave that to her, we were good to go after she re-input our reservation into their “new system”.  While she was getting us checked-in, I asked her if there was any type of Church Services available at the campsite.  She said that their was a Pastor and wife actually in the campground that conducted services there, but she wasn’t certain if they were in town or not.  I shared with her about our ministry and gave her one of our cards; , she got really excited.  She actually got on the phone while I was checking in to call the Pastor so that we could get in contact with him; she ended up having to leave a message and informing him that we were in the park, and the campsite that we would be staying in.  She also gave us their campsite number, so that we could go and stop by.  Come to find out, that Pastor and wife were from a small village in Alaska (hmmm); they were ministering in Alaska until they came to Arizona.  I was thinking to myself, “OK God, this looks like a setup”.  I asked the receptionist if I could bring some of our ministry cards by to leave at the office for the inbound campground guests; she said “absolutely”.  We were soon making our way to our campsite (#252) off of “Tomahawk” street.

After we got all setup, I was eager to touch base with the local campground Pastor, so I headed over the their site to see if we could make arrangements to help them with service that weekend.  Well, they were not home at the time so I left one of our cards in the side of their door, and hoped that they would get in touch with us later on.  It wasn’t too long and we made contact with Adriene’s sister Crystal; she came over to the campground to meet up with us and take us over to her house for dinner.  She lives about 10 miles from where we were staying.  I grabbed a small stack of cards to take to the front office, but when we passed by there, we found that the office was already closed for the day, so I planned on stoping by in the morning to drop the cards off.  Crystal is a foster parent, so on the way to her house, we stopped by one of her friend’s house to pick up her 2 foster kids (Analisa and Su) that were over there for the day; that was our first time meeting them.  We then went to her house and enjoyed dinner with her and the kids.  We spent the rest of the evening with them before we packed it up and Crystal took us back to the coach to call it a day.

It wasn’t my intention, but we put in a very long driving day beginning our ministry trip heading West.  My initial plan was to drive to Fort Stockton, Texas and spend the night there, but by the time we were getting into that area, it was still relatively early in the day, so I decided to keep on going.  This is the very reason why I don’t make a lot of RV Park reservations; I want to keep our options open and stop wherever the Lord leads us to stop; whether it is a shorter distance than planned, or much farther as we did on our first day.  By the time we finally pulled over for the evening, we were in Las Cruses, New Mexico; we called it an evening and pulled into a Walmart parking lot to spend the night.

One of the main reasons that I pulled over when I did was because we were having some challenges with our refrigerator.  We often have our refrigerator running while we are on the road, utilizing the propane option that we have, put for some reason, we were having to hit the reset multiple times, and before you know it, we were hearing the “beeping” sound that indicated a problem.  After multiple attempts to restart the fridge, I just decided to turn it off.  We had a fridge full of food, so I didn’t want to go too long without addressing the issue.  I had experienced this previously, so fortunately I had an idea of what I needed to do to remedy the situation.  Once we finally pulled into the Walmart parking lot and got the rig leveled and shut down, I pulled out my toolbox and I was in “refrigerator repairman” mode.  I had to do the repair from outside of the coach in the refrigerator access panel.  Essentially, I had to open the control panel and “jump start” the fridge with a wire on the control board.  Praise God for the “how to” sheet that I had on my iPad from my previous encounter with this same issue.  Thank the Lord, I was able to get the refrigerator dilemma resolved just before it started getting dark outside.  Once the fridge was back in working order, it wasn’t long, and my phone rang, we quickly transitioned into “ministry mode”.

Some friends of ours were experiencing struggles in their marriage; we had been ministering to them during their challenging times, so the husband gave me a call and I began sharing with him.  Before you know it, Adriene’s phone was ringing; yes, it was the wife.  I was inside speaking with the husband, Adriene was outside speaking with the wife.  It wasn’t a good night for them, but we are so grateful that God had us in place at the right time to intercede on their behalf.  We have found out that ministry opportunities often present themselves when we make ourselves available for service.  I also took the opportunity that evening to introduce myself to a couple truck drivers that were spending the night in the Walmart parking lot as well.  During my interactions with truck drivers, I usually will use the common bond of spending a lot of time on the road, and not in the “church” environment on the weekends as my way of starting a conversation with them that they can relate to.  As I did on this occasion, I introduced them to our ministry and our desire to share the love of Jesus as we traveled.  They were busy with their trucks, but they were receptive, so I gave them each one of our cards and blessed their travels. 

Most of our interactions with truck drivers are during our fueling stops.  It takes quite a while for “truckers” to fill their fuel tanks, so I will often take the opportunity to “plant a seed”.  I also leave a card at all of the fuel pumps that we use along the way, as we did earlier in the day.

It was kind of funny; as I was standing in the parking lot, I noticed a guy sitting on the curb with his dog at the neighboring hotel parking lot; I “assumed” he was homeless.  I went to our “stash” of Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s) that we keep in our storage bay, and grabbed a bottle of water to take to the “homeless” man.  The funny thing is that by time I was heading over to bless him with some food and water, I looked over and he was just sitting there waiting for someone to come out of the hotel.  He and his dog, jumped in his pickup with his friend and they drove off.  One thing I learned through that is that when you have a desire to be a blessing, everything and everybody looks like an opportunity.

We made a quick trip into the Walmart to pick up a couple things, then we came back out and settled down for the evening.  I was a long travel day, but we were well on our way.