View from Prayer Room at New Destiny Church
Our time in Ogden was intense. The Lord chose to minister to the needs of people who had been hurt and needed the Lord’s gentle arms of love to reassure them and help them to forgive others. This is not the easiest type of ministry, but it is so needful.
It was terrific to get to see all the Roberts’ kids again. Robert is married now and has the nicest wife possible…Liza-Anne. She was born in South Africa and still has a slight accent to help lay claim to it. Noelle is married also, to Ariel, a really super guy. Then there is Chantelle, who is doing great living for Jesus. We got to see Micah and Danny, who Bill used to play basketball with when we visited them in New Hampshire. And there were the two charming new additions: Eden and Selah! What a great family.
Pastor Ron Roberts, Trevor Chenoweth, and Bill
(Trevor was baptized in Jesus' name and, along with his friend Lauren, received the Holy Ghost.)
We ministered to two other churches in the Salt Lake area also, pastored by the Guerreros and the Rices. All three of the churches we visited are very multicultural. I was surprised to learn that the Salt Lake area is so diverse.
Ron, Devon, and Shawna Rice, Pastor of the Pentecostals of Salt Lake
We had a few days with portions of free time. Promontory Point, the famous place where the Union and Central Pacific railroad companies met in 1869, is located not too far from Ogden. Though we did not have time to visit Promontory Point, Thursday we were able to drive the few miles to Union Station, which houses the Browning Firearms Museum, an exclusive collection of 40 million dollars worth of guns. The original Browning gunmaker, Jonathan (born in 1805), became an LDS member. He had three wives and 22 children. Brigham Young asked him to equip LDS pioneers with guns for their long journey to Salt Lake City. Obviously, he and some of his successors were brilliant at gunmaking. Friday, John took Bill to Hill Air Force Base to look at bombs and planes, followed up by lunch at a Korean restaurant. Then, Saturday, Kevin took Bill fly fishing for a few hours. Airplanes, guns, fishing...some of Bill's favorite things! I was really happy that he had a little time to do some "guy stuff." He took me out to dinner one night, plus I had a few spare hours to get some things done. All the way around, those snatches of free time were appreciated!
Recently Retired 2,000 Pound Bomb
The Salt Lake Valley is a long urban string of towns. The Ogden church is in the foothills of the mountains. I was a little surprised by my reaction, but being so close to the mountains gave me a closed-in feeling. I did not like being unable to see very far around me.
Monday morning, September 19th, we took care of some tasks, packed up the RV (a three hour project), went to an RV repair shop to dump the tanks, got a quick lunch, filled the truck with diesel, and finally headed down Highway 15 sometime in the mid-afternoon. With the Salt Lake to our right and the mountains to our left, we maneuvered through construction until we were well out of the city area. In the desert, my inexperienced eye observed little except scrubby sagebrush.
It was dark by the time we wound our way through Arizona’s Virgin Mountains, which Kevin Zinn, a professional tennis player that we met, told us was beautiful. About 10 p.m., we crested the top of a mountain. Las Vegas spread out before us, millions of twinkling lights illuminating the desert floor. We drove through the city, which was congested even at that hour, and made it to Whole Foods five minutes before it closed. (We needed some dinner!) We got lost trying to find the Las Vegas RV Resort, where we stayed that night. Finally, the RV was set up, we ate our strange but tasty dinner, and crashed for the night.
The next day, the sun – piercingly hot – greeted us. About half an hour outside of Vegas, we experienced a replay of what occurred on our way to Utah. (See the previous blog post entitled 48 Hours.) Bill had replaced the water pump and thermostat when we were in Salt Lake City, but apparently the truck was getting hot for other reasons. (More about that in a later blog, maybe.) So, we repeated the pull-over, lift-the-hood, let-the-engine-cool routine. At one point, I looked back down the hill into the valley that we had just come from. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but I was a little too focused on hoping the truck would keep on trucking to take a picture. Once when I stepped out to lift the hood, Bill warned, “Watch out for rattlesnakes.” We were, after all, on the northern rim of the brutal Mohave Desert.
The temperature had climbed into the triple digits. Not only was our truck hot, but we were too. We crossed rivers that were no rivers, just dry beds filled with hot sand. I said to Bill, “This is miserable country.” “It looks a little like Jordan,” he said. “Yeah,” I responded, “But it isn’t as majestic and it doesn’t have biblical history to compensate for the heat!”
Finally, the bad hills were behind us and we could breathe easier. On the outskirts of Barstow, California, we pulled into the California Agricultural Inspection Station. We had heard that they would inspect all your produce. Bobby was the attendant in our lane. As soon as he heard that Bill was a fulltime evangelist, his face widened into a big smile, he shook Bill’s hand, and said, “That’s great Brother!” He asked us to pray for him, since he is considering going to Detroit to open a church. He quickly asked us what kind of produce we had and sent us on our way. We didn’t even have to open the RV and show him our food.
In Barstow, we switched to Highway 58 and headed north. Also in Barstow, we had some long stressful moments as we searched for a place to buy fuel. We were low; there aren’t many places in the desert to fill up. Barstow was a lot smaller than I expected, but I was glad they had diesel truck stops!
Along 58, to our right, we saw the plant where borax is produced and a little later we passed the exit to Edwards Air Force Base. Not too long before we reached the town called Tehechapi, we saw hundreds of windmills, strategically located along the mountain ridges. They were quite artistic. Before long, we began to see cows and the landscape eventually turned from sandy-brown to green. I was relieved to be away from the hot desert.
About 8 p.m., we pulled into Fresno. Pastor Wodoslawsky was there to greet us and our 21 days of Utah adventures were officially a memory. Now, a new phase is beginning, here in the San Joaquin Valley, where we are looking forward to God doing great and wonderful things!
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