9:42 a.m. – Feed and water cats. That encompasses four
feed bowls and four water bowls, half upstairs and half downstairs. Four cats
eat a lot. One of them weighs 25 pounds, okay, 24 ½. I generally check their
food three times a day and change the water twice.
10:20 – Brush teeth. Finally found a good dentist. I wanna
keep her happy…
10:30 – Shave.
10:45 – Shower and get ready, finish packing, head to church
and help load van. Kelly and I are going on a mission trip today along with
about 20 other folks from the church. One of our former members, Rodney
Mileski, is now a church planter in Carmel, a suburb of Indianapolis just on the
north/northeast side of town, and we're going to work with him. Of course Indy is about a 110-mile drive north of
us. I’ll drive the new church van, along with luggage and equipment. I'll also be pulling a trailer for the first time in 31 years, and only the second time I've done that. John
Borengasser, our minister of music and administration, will be driving the new
mini-bus. Neither are brand new, just new to us…
12:57 – Head for Carmel. Stop in Seymour, the home of John
Cougar Mellencamp, because the bus is running hot. Pit stop at a service
station/mini-mart there, make a few phone calls to seek help and advice. Dan Fidler
tells us to idle the bus and let it cool off, then don’t drive as fast. If it
gets over 58 mph it begins heating up. So the second half of the trip on I-65
to Indy is a lot slower than the first half.
Check into hotel about 4 p.m. We’re at the Staybridge Inn
and Suites in Fishers, right next to Carmel. Got a good rate on the rooms
there.
Along with a free breakfast, the hotel also serves a free
dinner between 4 and 7 in the evenings (during the week, not on weekends).
First night is burgers cooked out in the hotel’s courtyard, and they are
delicious.
After dinner, went to the park we’ll be working out of all
week, Meadowlark Park near downtown Carmel. We’re told to canvas the
neighborhood and promote the “VBS in the Park” we’ll be doing for the next
three mornings. We can’t knock on apartment doors but we can approach people
who are outside. Dick Zuberer, my Sunday School teacher at church who I’ll be
rooming with, is with me as well as 17-year-old Rebecca Woolsey, who probably
kept people from yelling at us with her presence. Truth is though, the people
are very polite and friendly, and one woman tells us she’s living with her
sister, who has four kids that probably need to be in the Bible School. That
contact might yet pan out for Rodney, but those kids were not at the VBS. We
walked a very busy bike/hiking trail which led downtown, and talked with
several people along the way…
Our room would be Grand Central Station at the hotel, the
meeting place for devotionals in the morning and lunches two or three days during the
week, plus other meetings. We went to a nearby Meijer and picked up some
groceries, loading up the fridge and buying some pork I would cook the next
morning for lunch that day. Got 48 bottles of water for 6 bucks. They lasted
about two days and we had to go back for more later in the week. Also had soft
drinks in the fridge. One night our door got knocked on about 25 times, but it
was hot up there, and we were all tired and thirsty…
Stayed up till about 1:30 talking and fellowshipping with
Dick, which would be about average for our bedtime. Set the wake-up call for 6:45,
he took the couch in the living room and let me have the kingsize bed. I didn’t
argue with him about that…
