Couple of things about tonight......

It's looking like grilled cheese and tomato soup tonight! YUM. YUM. YUM.

We've got a new truck! Actually the church got a new truck but we use it every week and look at it as part of the family, so.....we've got a new truck!
It was put in the shop because the right front brake was feeling and sounding bad. They looked at it and said it would be $1800 to fix because they found a bunch of other brake and wheel related problems. The choice of the property management committee was fix and keep it long term or get something else. "Get something else" won. They traded it in and we got a 2003.
I'm kinda sad, though. I liked that truck. That truck had been with us since we started.
In honor of the service the truck gave us all these years, I'm going to tell a story about the truck.....plus it's a funny story and needs to be told every so often.

A couple of months into this ministry, back when it was still pretty much just me, Skyler, Jonathan, Mason, Drew and Colby, we loaded up the truck at The Activity Center and got ready to take our stuff downtown.  The tailgate on the truck was a little hinky and you had to slam it good to make sure it was shut. We had two 8 ft. portable tables (the brown ones that took 2 people to carry), and 4 rectangular coolers with ice, drinks(this was back when we served canned drinks every week), and our food in the back. I was driving the truck and everyone else was in Jonathan's explorer.
As I pulled off out of the parking lot, I heard a large thump. I looked and saw someone had left a cooler on top of another and it had slid off. It wasn't the first time.

When we finished that night we loaded up to come back and one of the guys shut the tailgate. I said Did you slam it? They said Yeah.

I was in front of them at the stoplight at Dawson and 17th. When I pulled off I heard another thump. I thought Who keeps stacking coolers on top of each other?
 I drove on to the A.C. and pulled around to back to unload. I got out and started to reach in the back to grab a cooler and....nothing. There wasn't a single thing in the back of the truck! NOTHING!
Aw crap.
So I jump in the truck and head back the way I came. When I get to the intersection of Independence and College, I see Jonathan's Explorer coming towards me, loaded down with everything I had lost.
They were still laughing and howling when they got out of his car.
Here's what happened:
When I took off at the light, one of the coolers slid and hit the tailgate, knocking it open (the thump I heard). The bed of the truck had a plastic liner which was fairly slick and when the tailgate went down, the tables now had nothing to keep them from sliding out, did exactly that. And tthe tables took all four coolers with them, right there in the middle of the intersection, in front of Jonathan and the other guys.
So now there's 4 coolers and 2 tables strowed across the intersection. A car comes through and slams into one of the coolers, knocking the top off the hinges. The guys pull over and start trying to get things out of the intersection. The ice cooler has upended and spilled out and  Mason slips in it and goes feet up flat on his back in the middle of the road! They're laughing at that, laughing at the situation in general, trying not to get run over, wondering why I don't know everything fell out of the truck, trying to get it all loaded....just a big chaotic adventure.

The tables survived. The coolers were okay, except for the one that got hit, but we still used it. Mason had a nice bruise but was fine. I got the tailgate fixed and a reminder of the need to check everything myself before we pull out.

R.I.P. 1993 Ford truck