Paul Alton MBA

Juanita and I went for a walk in the Challenger Seven Memorial Park, a pleasant county park honouring the seven astronauts who lost their lives in the Challenger space shuttle explosion. Somewhere on the parks staff must be a nanny state sign maker. The walk in the park and a brief stroll through Costco got me close to the 10k a day steps. I completed the tally with repeated trips to CiCi’s pizza buffet where we went to lunch with Juanita’s sister.

We worked off the pizza a little bit by touring the 1940’s Houston Air Terminal then just sat around visiting until we called it a day.

After breakfast with one of Juanita’s nieces we drove back to Harlingen from Houston. The breakfast was at Pena Donuts and Diner, an old favorite of ours. It is under different ownership than when we used to go there often. The food is still good, but the ordering process is not as patron friendly as before. The restaurant is no longer as busy as it was in the past. The upside of this change for us was we were able to visit in relatively quiet surroundings.

Oscar Brooks was a surprise speaker this morning in chapel. His Jamaica trip was postponed. He continued to speak in Psalm 83 starting in verse 9.

After chapel, Juanita helped in the office. I went with Byron to the training center to check out air conditioners and pick up a pressure washer to be available for a group of teens arriving next week. Later we visited with Oscar, ran some errands and adjusted (again) a shower valve.

We were first in the “express line” at the local Nissan dealer when it opened at seven this morning. Unlike the express lane at our home Nissan dealer this line is by appointment not first come first serve. Nevertheless we were out of there shortly after eight and made it in time for chapel.

In chapel a few people shared their insights into a couple of scriptures.

Ben - We face battles. In the book of Nehemiah they faced battles when rebuilding the wall. Opposition from every side. If we are busy about our Father’s business we will face opposition from the devil.

Nehemiah 4:17-18 - Those who built on the wall with one hand worked construction, with the other hand had a weapon. Building the wall, they were  probably fearful but went ahead with the Lord’ s work

There are always things e.g. finances, but God provides. It is a blessing that God is using us

Carol - from Titus 3:3-8 - we ourselves … but after that … according to his mercy… heirs …

Arnold - in Nehemiah the  enemy would come and distract them to prevent them from building. Enemy resists. He wants to stop what God has started. God lifted up those walls for his people’s protection. Sword at side. We have the Sword of the Spirit.

Arnold spoke in chapel on the road less travelled:

Matthew 7:21

As a pastor I try to speak words of hope and love and comfort, but the Bible also has words of rebuke. Jesus here says not every person who says lord, lord will enter heaven. The word says we are to do the will of the father.

God gives us free will but also works in our hearts that we are do the will of the Father. We have plans which not bad but we always have to consider if it is God’s will. We have choices to make when we reach a fork in the road. Sometimes those Choices, those roads are not easy. We like to have it easy.

We like to be served. Sometimes we have to take hard steps for the furtherance of the kingdom. Preparing the way for our Lord and Saviour. It may be hard at times but it is worth it when we see people coming to the Lord.

It will be worth it to hear well done my faithful servant. God gives strength to do his work. Jesus says I came to save the lost.

After chapel Juanita worked in the office. I ran an errand then helped Byron install an air conditioning unit in a motor home to be used as staff housing. We got most of the interior work done and plan to carry on tomorrow with the rest. I was shy a few thousand steps and completed the daily tally at a local park.

Ben spoke in chapel riffing on a twenty-page lesson he is preparing for an upcoming evangelism school. ASA he says, some preachers preach a sermon once. He figures a message is improved upon not just delivered once. “Will you remember it when it’s done or even a little part of it?” 

I believe God gives everyone dreams and visions more so in these end times. A vision, you  get when awake, comes into mind and think about it. I’ve learned to write it down 

“I will pour out my spirit…”  We will have visions they’re not just for a special few.

Have learned about dreams, wonderful dreams about the kingdom growing. I write them down. 1st dream  1-1/2 years into ministry. Saw buses and vans coming into that facility. “Jesus Saves” on vehicles. 

Had a dream of training center, Then drove past the training center while daughter learning to drive. “Go back!” The windows were broken out the ceilings were falling down. We bought it.

A few years later. We had a big group. Was told not to speak to them. I left and had a vision of a cavern with people leaping into it. “Go back in and do what you’re supposed to do.” I did. 

Five things (learned a lot from Habakuk)

• Wait to see what the Lord will do
• write it down keep it in front of you
• Act on the vision, even if you can only do a small thing
• Do what you can do but sometimes you have to wait
• Be asking God for dreams and visions 

Juanita did some office work and made the bank deposit for the ministry.

I worked with Byron on installing a mini split A/C unit in the staff motor home. Finished the installation. Turned on the power. Unit didn’t run. (Probably why it was donated). Found another control board in a new, good unit. After an interruption to troubleshoot a water heater that had quit working we installed the new control board. It then worked but there was no tape to wrap the refrigerant lines. Tomorrow’s chore list. Byron used the spray foam for where the refrigerant lines passed through the wall. He then had to leave for a prior commitment. I used the rest of the foam in the can to close a hole in a dorm room. The hole had allowed cats to get in. I tried to install the bad control board back into the spare unit from  which we had taken the good one but couldn’t manage to make it fit. Another chore for tomorrow’s list.

We spent a bit too much time getting ready to leave and left about half an hour later than planned to view the SpaceX launch from Boca Chica. The training center is about forty miles distant from the launch pad. We wanted to get about five miles away to where we could see the Starbase structures across the flat coastal plain. We got about twenty miles away when the launch happened. We could see and hear the rocket blast off, but low scrub obscured our view of the launch pad itself. Everything happens quickly. It wasn’t long before the booster returned. We heard the sonic boom but couldn’t orient ourselves to see the booster itself on its way back to the launch pad.

Still a fun experience. On the way home we picked up some tape for the A/C lines and stopped at the Marble Slab for a treat.

Ben led devotions in chapel this morning with a story he wrote four or five years ago about a cup. The following are partial notes of same.

John 10:10 - The thief comes.. I come that you might have life…

A story about a wise man that lived way up on mountain. He was a master potter who made cups. Each cup was different and each was beautiful in its own way. One particular cup went to be sold in Walmart in Harlingen, Texas. Nobody bought it for years.

One day some rowdy kids came in disrupting the place. One of them stole the cup. He took it to a beer party and drank beer out of it. He painted a skull and crossbones on it.

He went to South Padre island. Smoking pot there, he used the cup as an ashtray. He was arrested. The car and the contents were impounded. The car was sold. The contents went to Way of the Cross warehouse. Nobody wanted the ugly cup but one missionary took the cup and cleaned it up. A family came in wanting to buy the cleaned-up cup. Not for sale but you can have it.

The family took the cup home. They followed the master potter’s instructions and filled the cup with living water. The cup ended up in the master potter hall of fame.

We are that cup. WE may have messed up early lives but have beencleaned up and used by the Master.

After chapel, Juanita checked to see if there was any work in the office to be done then headed back to our loaner rig. I worked with Byron on the riding sweeper. We got the dump function working. Then we headed out to the training center and finished the A/C install on the staff motor home. Byron put the control board back in the spare unit. He will seek a good replacement for the board.

We said our goodbyes and he went off to work on the next item on his list. I started loading the car as far as I could until we did the laundry. I did all the outside chores that needed doing to leave the fifth wheel trailer shut down and cleaned. It was 32 C today. I did as much as possible of work that might raise a sweat.

We ate lunch using up most of the food in the fridge and passed on the worthwhile remains to a friend. I dropped Juanita at the laundromat, went to Walmart for a tote to store some dishes and kitchen stuff then to Sam’s for gas. Back home we finished packing, loaded up and were on the road to Mathis, at 4:07 pm. We had planned on leaving tomorrow morning, but momentum took over.

We stayed at the same Mathis motel we had stayed at on the way south.

Booking.com managed to not forward our booking to the motel. That got sorted out after a while or the desk clerk gave up looking for it and took a photo of our conformation email. While Juanita was sorting, I did some steps in the parking lot. A burly female with mental or intoxicant issues verbally abused me while I walked. She went into the check-in office, beat on the bell, threw it on the floor, yelled and left.

When we went to the room, she was two doors over and verbally abused us. We used the bathroom and left in our car, stopping at the office to report the incident. As we did the police arrived. We went back to the room to drop off our bags before leaving for supper. The police were giving her a sobriety test while she verbally abused them.

We had supper at our favourite nearby Taqueria. When we returned to the room the police and the loud burly lady were still interacting. She had changed out of shorts into slacks and apparently had been determined capable of driving. After much drama the departure occurred. She made a horn honking circuit of the parking lot on her way away.

We did a bit of research about tomorrow’s travel. I wrote up some rough notes about today and we slept perchance without loud burly interruptions.

Awake at five

On the road about six. We had breakfast at a drive-through in Beeville and continued to Bastrop doing a driveby of the huge Starlink factory on our way to town. Well, actually, out of our way to town, but it wasn’t a huge detour and we still arrived in Bastrop about ten which is the opening time for the Painted Porch Bookstore, Started by author Ryan Holiday just in time for the Covid lockdowns.

We walked around downtown Bastrop. It has been much gentrified since we stayed there in the mid aughts.  I remember it as a clean but somewhat empty town. Now it bustles on a warm spring Saturday morning with all the downtown shops and restaurants busy.

We had packed away our shorts last night and missed them this morning. However, this evening in Kilgore we would be happy to be wearing pants.

I handed out a few curved illusion tracts. We browsed Painted Porch Bookstore. So many books I would like to read. I took pictures of some to add to future reading lists. I know enough not to buy more books I am not going to get around to reading. Except one by Ryan Holiday.

We walked part of the River Walk below the main street then got back in the car and headed to Tyler TX. We stopped for lunch on the way at a Laredo Taco Company. In Tyler it was cold and drizzly. Hoody and windbreaker weather when we stopped by a Sam’s Club for steps. On the way out of town we picked up a 1200 calorie brownie and ice cream to use up the last of our Texas Roadhouse Christmas gift card.

We drove to our motel in Kilgore, turned on the heat and left to pick up pizza. Back at the motel Juanita shampooed her hair while I got in the last of the daily 10k steps walking the covered walkway around the motel.

We ate half the pizza and put the rest in the fridge for breakfast.

Early to bed, the daylight savings time shift happens tonight.

On the road about 7 DST, 6 body time.

We stopped at Sam’s Club in Pearl, MS (Jackson, MS area) about noon for steps and samples. It was going to be for steps, samples and salad. In the cooler where salads normally live in a Sam’s Club Café were only containers with pieces of tuxedo cake. I guess they know their clientele. They didn’t look like a salad crowd.

We picked up drinks at a drive through on the way back to the interstate. None of the fast food choices appealed to us after browsing on samples and having been primed for salads.

Four hours later we stopped at Sam’s Club in Birmingham, AL for salad, steps and fuel. No samples. All the sample kiosks were tucked in for the night.

We drove 40 minutes to our motel near Gadsden, AL. We checked in, turned on the heater (desk clerk said unusually cool weather - usually the ACs running by this time of year). We drove to Walmart for a USB cable, picking up McDonald’s sundaes on the way back to the room. People don’t live on salads alone.

When we travel at this time of the year we keep one eye on the weather forecast.

The vague pre planning stage of this year’s trip north included a fuzzy concept of wandering around the southeast, maybe spending a few days visiting friends and short travel days.

A historically dramatic developing storm system will put us in the middle of projected swarms of tornadoes if we linger here too long. Our friends’ schedule has then available today. We plan to drive two hours northeast to visit much of the day with them. Then the plan is to put the hammer down heading northwest to get above the nasty weather on the great plains later this week.

That may put out arrival back home in time for a ten-inch dump of snow. We had been admiring all the bare ground appearing on our doorbell camera, By the time we get back home that may be a thing of the past.

We may hunker down between here and home

Stay tuned.

Here it is March 24. I’m back. Back keyboarding. We arrived back in the country on March 12, back home March 13.

Speaking of back, let’s get back to the travel tales like the keyboarding had never been interrupted.

We left Gadsden, AL early, but it didn’t seem early enough when we crossed the border into Georgia and the clock shifted an hour forward into the Eastern Time Zone. We arrived at our friends’ home in Cleveland, TN about ten am. After five hours of visiting and a wonderful lunch we headed to Nashville. They headed to a U-Haul location to pick up a trailer to haul some stuff back from Dallas. They leave in the morning. They only need the trailer one way but if they take it there and back they only pay daily rental. If they picked it up in Dallas they would pay the mileage. It costs half as much to drag the trailer both ways. Go figure.

On the way to Cleveland we went through horrific construction on the loop around Chattanooga mid afternoon would be worse than mid morning. We elected to take a longer, less direct route to Nashville. More scenic, as well.

Our destination in Nashville was the Parthenon. They had erected a replica of the Patrhenon in Athens for The Tennessee Centennial Exposition. The “Exposition opened one year after the state’s 1896 centennial”. The replica was so popular that a more permanent replica was built in subsequent years.

We wandered around the Parthenon for a while. Juanita retreated to the car to read while I got in some steps and handed out curved illusion tracts to the throngs enjoying the warm spring evening. Once my step count was high enough we headed northwest out of the city and stopped for gas and some fast food. That was just about enough driving for this old body in one day. We booked a hotel a bit down the road in Clarksville.

It was hammer down time. No scenic stops today. We stopped twice for gas in Mauston, WI and before that in Champaign, IL where we stopped at Sam’s Club for samples, steps and lunch. We followed Interstates, ignoring Mr. Google’s frequent suggestions that we could save a toll by taking a different, longer route. Forty-five more minutes of driving to save $1.90. No thanks.

The balance of the step count for the day we picked up at rest stops and at a Walmart in Tomah after supper at Arby’s.

I said yesterday was hammer down time. Today was that on steroids. The steps tracking app allows one day of rest every seven days. I had been saving the rest day for the big push. We were on the road at 6:34 and drove through the rest of Wisconsin, Minneapolis/ St Paul, across Minnesota to Fargo, North Dakota. Roads were clear and dry all the way and stayed that way north to the border around Winnipeg and across Manitoba to Saskatchewan. We stopped for a quick lunch at a Taco Belle somewhere in Minnesota (St. Cloud?) and for supper at Tim’s in Brandon, MB.

The sun was setting as we left Brandon.

Somewhere past Verdin it was dark enough that it was hard to make out details of an object that may be ahead of us on the highway. I deciphered the poorly lit outline of the back trailer of a B-train that totally blocked both westbound lanes as the drive tried to turn onto the east bound lanes. There was enough time and room to brake and swerve around the tail end on the shoulder. As Juanita said the next day, “You’re supposed to see your life flash before you when you are going to die. All I saw was the side of a B-train.”

We bought gas and some snacks at the Co-op gas station in Moosomin before heading for the hotel we had booked while stopped in Brandon.

We picked up coffee and breakfast sandwiches at the Co-op gas station to get on the road slightly before 7.

The roads were clear and dry all the way to Regina. Once we headed north that changed. It wasn’t snowing but a strong wind was blowing snow across the highway. Little of the snow was sticking but visibility was sketchy at times. We stopped for a pit stop at Craik and for gas at Davidson. The next day we heard of some extended family members who had been stranded in Davidson on Thursday afternoon on their way to Regina. A car and a semi had collided in the poor visibility.

The highway out of Saskatoon was better. The wind was at our back and wasn’t pulling snow out of the fields. By the time we turned north at North Battleford we started encountering snow falling and building up on the highway. Driving wasn’t bad if you stayed below the speed limit. The trick is to go fast enough you are not at risk of being passed and slow enough you are not overtaking others. Closer to the turnoff to the grid road from the highway to our home the snow had diminished, but was still falling.

We arrived back home about two in the afternoon and parked on the grid road. There was a ridge at the end of the driveway from the winter of snow plowing. Not much of a ridge this year. There had been recent melting plus the snowplow driver had been directing most of the snow to the south side of the road. All the homes and their driveways are on the north side.

We climbed over the ridge, unlocked the gate, and unlocked the house. Juanita started a fire in the wood stove. I changed clothes and dragged an extension cord to the shed where the snow blower was stored. It started quickly on electric start and I made my way to the gate. In about an hour we could bring the car off the grid road and I started on the rest of the driveway. By 5:30 we had a parking spot in front of the house and went over to Deborah and Ernie’s for supper and a visit.  

After I got the water system up and running and flushed we went to visit Deborah. She had been away at work last night when we went there for supper. When we came back, I finished snow blowing last night’s snow accumulation then the driveway loop so we could go all the way around.

Later we determined the fridge was not getting cold. It didn’t like waking up after a winter off. Juanita was tied up having coffee with granddaughter Sonja in town this afternoon. Fridge shopping can wait until tomorrow.

First thing today we pulled the fridge out from the wall. I cleaned any build up from the coils and checked temperatures. The compressor was running but not doing anything. Not worth a service call. Modern refrigerators last “from ten to fifteen years”. We got fourteen years from this one. I took measurement of the space available and the old fridge. We went to town. The one we liked was bigger than the measurements I had written down, but close. Maybe it will fit. The store agreed they could deliver it today if we decided by noon.

Back home. Nope. First choice won’t fit unless I move the wall cabinets up. Possible but more work than we want to do. I could move just the one wall cabinet. That would look odd. Second choice refrigerator will fit. Just barely. With a quarter inch to spare.

We went back to town and did the paperwork for the fridge purchase. They would also take the old one away for $35. Since the tip fee for refrigerators is $25 plus their weight plus the $20 of diesel fuel to get to the dump and back. We paid for the fridge, the delivery and taking the old one out of our lives.

Back home. Empty the fridge. Take all the magnetic memorabilia off the outside. Move all the furniture between the door and the fridge location. Do spring cleaning where the furniture has been all year. The sturdy young men show up, take the old fridge out to deck, bring in and place the new fridge and go away with the old fridge and all the packing material.

We move the furniture back in place.

We go back to town to buy the groceries we didn’t buy because we had no fridge.

The rest of the month we puttered. I slothed a lot except for getting in the 10k a day steps. I did this mostly by moving shovel loads of snow from various locations into the pond so the pond would have enough water after the thaw.

We prepped to be away for an indeterminate time for a job at a refinery near Edmonton. The job could run from early April to June but is more likely to just be April and a bit of May.

Then we start getting ready for a planned trip to Japan in June.

Keyboarding could be sparse until then.