In Part 1 and 2 of “How We Became Missionaries”, I explained how God solved my debt problems and how I was able to keep my house, and go into missions. This is the third part of our story that begins when we get back to Minnesota after 3 months on the mission field.
In part one when I told my employer (SUPERVALU Stores in Eden Prairie, MN) that I was leaving for three months for missions, although they were somewhat incredulous, they told me they admired what I was doing. My boss told me after the three months, to come back and she would re-hire me. They had a lot of work, and would like to have me back. Now with my plan, I had the mortgage payment paid for July, August, and September, with enough other money for the rest of September. I planned on finding another computer job within the first week or two of being back…. Hopefully soon enough to be able to make my mortgage payment ($1000) on October 1st. I was overjoyed at the news that I wouldn’t need to find another contract in September – God was taking care of everything! So here is where this story begins, we got back to El Paso, Texas, the end of August, 1996.
The first work day after we got back, I put on my suit and went to SUPERVALU and into my former boss’ office. And with a confident smile, I said, “I’m back”. After some small talk, she said, “We’ve had some budget changes, and although I’d like to bring you back on staff, I can’t at this time.” I was surprised, but these were good people, and things like this happened. I thought, “No problem, I’ll just go back to my original plan and find another contract”. I’ve done that many times. I knew a lot of people in the industry, and I was used to finding jobs quickly. I had enough money for the month of September. One week went by and no job. Two weeks went by. This was unusual as I normally found jobs easily in the past. Three weeks went by and no work. Partially into the 4th week, I got a phone call. It was Randy, and old friend of mine, whom I had not talked to in over a year. He asked me if I was working. I thought that was a very unusual question as he was not in the computer business. I said, “Actually, I’m not working at the moment”. He said, “How would you like to be a beet truck driver?” Needless to say, my next question was “What?” I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he asked me if I could drive a stick. I said “Yes”. Randy lived in Wisconsin, and I lived in Minnesota. He told me of a friend of his in Drayton, North Dakota, who had a farm and grew sugar beets. These sugar beets were about the size of a grapefruit and weighed 4 pounds. It was harvest time and they needed sugar beet truck drivers to drive the beets from the field to the collection point. It was ten days work, 12 hours a day, and $10 an hour. Now, I was a computer guy. Although this was different from anything I had ever done, this was a job. I needed money, God knew I needed money, this call was certainly at a time of need, so I said, “Yes”. I asked what kind of truck it was. He said it was like a big gravel dump truck. The truck, when fully loaded with sugar beets, was 17 tons. I told him I didn’t have a Commercial Driver’s License to drive it. He told me that was okay, because they needed so many drivers for the farms (at least 4 per farm), they couldn’t find enough drivers with CDLs. So during the sugar beet harvest, the state allowed people to drive those trucks with just a regular driver’s license. Note to self: “”Don’t drive in that area during the sugar beet harvest, because there are amateurs everywhere driving 17 ton trucks on the highways!” I needed to leave Sunday noon after morning church. I would arrive Sunday night in North Dakota and was to start the following midnight. We were at the end of the month. We were at the end of the money. I had to leave. Cheri would be staying back with our three children. She said, “Our October mortgage payment is due in two days”. I said, “Yes”. “Do we have any money?” She asked. I said, “Well, I have enough gas in the car to get me there. I’ll be able to buy gas to get back when they pay me. I have the bag of peanut butter sandwiches you made for me. And I’m leaving you with all the money I have, $20.” She asked if our second car worked. “No, it has a mechanical problem” I said. We were both silent for a moment, and I saw a tear come down her cheek. I said, “This is how I look at it. When you’re at the end of the line, and there is nowhere to go, that’s the time to get excited, because that’s when God works!” The tear continued down her face. I hugged her and she told me to call her when I arrived so she would know I got there safely. I kissed her and my children goodbye. *And I left.*
Let me stop here for a moment. Some of you are thinking, “What a terrible guy! Just leaving his poor wife and children like that! No. The previous three months on the mission field were still fresh on our minds. We all saw God answer prayer after prayer and do the impossible before our eyes. I didn’t have a choice here. I tried to get a job. I couldn’t. An unusual job came up with no other options. I took it. I had no other choice. We had to trust God. He took care of us for three months on the mission field. Why would He stop now? And I knew He did like to do things at the last minute. Sometimes it isn’t easy, but we all were trusting in The Lord!
I got to the farm later that night and they put me in a camper trailer next to the farmer’s house. It was about 11:00pm when I called Cheri. She was excited! Some friends knew her car didn’t work and drove her and my children to Sunday night church. They had a fellowship afterwards and some people came up to her and said they knew we were short of money. They gave her checks, enough money for the month of October – including the mortgage payment!! Glory to God! God had solved the problem at the last minute! Just like He likes to! As we were rejoicing, Cheri said, “But I don’t have a car to get to the bank to deposit the checks!” And we both laughed! But God didn’t forget that detail either. The next day a guy from the church showed up and fixed the car. God is SO good!
And me? I had a great time driving that truck! I am telling you, when I was a little kid, I loved playing with trucks in the sand box. And here I was, driving a real truck! This truck (see picture) had 20 gears. Two stick shifts on the floor. The first one had first through fourth. The second stick had first through fourth. A combination of these two was how you drove in the field (6-8 inches of loose dirt), on a grassy field next to the plowed field, on a gravel road, and on the highway. I basically had to shift about 18 times between the field and the collection point. On the highway I got it up to 55 MPH. With a full load, you had to be careful at that speed, as it took about the length of a football field to stop. I prayed nobody would pull out in front of me and stop quick… because with 17 tons, the brakes were worthless for a quick stop. My 12-hour shift was midnight to noon. We were in the field for 10 days…. Except for 24 hours on Sunday, that was a day of rest and the farmer wouldn’t work to honor the Lord’s Day. He really got my respect doing that. He was taking a chance with the weather, as it easily could get freezing cold or heavy rain. But he decided he was going to honor God, thereby adding an extra day to harvest. The cold did come, the temp dropped to 10 degrees one night. The farmer told me at that temperature, at the collection point they would cut open some of the beets on the truck to see if any were frozen. If there were, they wouldn’t accept anything on that load – you had to dump it. We prayed and God blessed him! None of the beets froze. The rain came too on one night, and you can understand, water on a field of 6-8 inches of dirt, the mud would stop any harvesting. When the rain came, we prayed. It rained on 3 sides of us, but not on us. God had answered our prayers. I believed that farmer honored God, and God honored him! God was good!
When that job ended, I still couldn’t find a computer job, so I took a minimum wage job at a pig farm. That was something! He had about 300 pigs. The farmer would take 1 or 2 pigs to the market every other day to have cash on hand. At first I felt sorry for the pigs… until I got to know how miserable those animals are. They’d push to get to the trough and bite the ears of the pig in front of them, making them squeal and move. After a while it was okay with me to take them all to the slaughter house. I didn’t do much work with the pigs, but I did get to drive the tractor in the fields a lot. Man! Just like in the sandbox, I really liked driving a tractor and plowing the fields! The farmer asked me if I was afraid of heights. I said no. He had three 40-foot grain bins next to each other. When one was full, you had to climb up there and re-direct the grain trough to the next bin. He wanted me to climb up there to show me what to do. I walked up to the steel ladder attached to the side of the bin. The first rung was at the level of the top of my head. I asked him where the rest of the rungs were. He just looked at me and said, “We don’t want the little kids climbing up”. He then reached up and pulled himself up. Let me just say, a computer guy doesn’t need much arm strength to tap the keys on a computer keyboard. So pulling myself straight up took a very special effort! That special effort was trying NOT to make groaning sounds while I pulled myself up. I was a farmhand for about 3 weeks.
When that ended, I STILL couldn’t find a computer job so I got another minimum wage job delivering furniture. I drove a truck that was about as high as a semi and about half the length. It was big enough that the semi drivers would give me a wave as we passed. You know, kind of a brotherhood of trucker’s wave. That was cool. In this job, I had a young guy that I worked with. I was 49, and he was 18. He was easy to work with, I just needed to tell him what to do. He wouldn’t do anything unless I told him….and I mean that literally. Whenever we carried anything, I had to tell him to pick up his end, otherwise he’d just stand there. The furniture store was a specialty store with carved furniture and log-type beds. Beautiful and expensive stuff. There was a nearby Indian reservation that had a casino on the reservation that was very lucrative. The owner of the store told me the people from the reservation would come in and always pay with cash. Whether it was $300 or $3000 they paid with cash. One lady from the reservation bought a couch – a white satin full size couch. We took it to her address. She lived in a trailer home. The entire yard around the trailer was soft mud. We had to carefully carry that couch about 30 feet through the mud – the couch did not have any plastic covering. We finally got to the door – it had a small three step porch. I knocked and when she opened the door, the inside of that trailer looked like a palace! It had a lot of “white” in there including a white shag carpet that looked new. I didn’t move for a moment as I looked at my boots that were covered in mud. She said, “Would you please remove your shoes before you come in?” Of course I said yes, and it wasn’t easy as we couldn’t set the couch down while we took our boots off. I did that about two weeks and had fun with that job!
Following that I finally got a computer contract. Those jobs were a blessing, and I liked them all!
God’s point here:
God could have easily given me a computer contractor job. But He didn’t. He chose instead to take me on a journey of TRUSTING HIM. As I said earlier, that may not be easy for any of us, but it strengthens us! God knows we all need strengthening for anything we do for Him. The spiritual battle is fierce – we need everything God gives us and teaches us. God knows what is before us, we don’t. If we have a heart to serve the Lord in any capacity, Satan will try to stop us. He is the enemy and He is against us. He is without question stronger and smarter than we are. We need to depend on God if we are to survive. Honoring God isn’t a game. We need to trust God when He takes us through trials that teach us. Those trials are good. They are meant to teach us how to fight against a much stronger opponent in spiritual battle, and win.
“If God be for us, who can be against us?” Rom. 8:31
Grandpa Jack's Place 