Revival In Pictures - St. Stephens, Alabama

September 11, 2001

19 years have passed, but we should never forget.

Revival In Pictures

We have enjoyed revival at Midway Assembly all week long. Pastor Lamar Chapman and his people are so kind to us and we love being with them. We have one more service to go and we are anxious to see what the Lord is going to do.

It is amazing to watch the way God works among his people. His Word is powerful and lively and speaks to us in a way we can understand it. I love watching the Word of the Lord settle deep down into hearts and make a difference in lives.

Everyone here is being very careful with the pandemic in the air and that is comforting to us. We all long for this mess to be over, but until it is, we want to do our best not to be a spreader OR a catcher of COVID 19. It is so nice when folks around us feel the same way.

Today is Revival In Pictures so we should get to it. I hope you enjoy the pictures from Midway Assembly.

Davy

Stopping An Underground River

Our Mile Markers not only serve to keep friends and family informed about what is going on, but they also serve as a log of sorts for ourselves. We often look back in the archives to find out when "this" broke, how "that" was fixed or where in the world we were located at a specific time.

This post will definitely serve that purpose for us.

Stopping An Underground River
You may remember that during the initial shutdown in March, KJo and I flew from overseas to Tennessee where our bus was parked. Two days later we drove to Ohio and two days after that we began revival online. 

When we arrived home, one of the first things I had to do was get water flowing in the barn.

I always shut the water off in the barn during the coldest part of winter since we are not there anyway. I noticed a small leak in the barn before we vamoosed in January. In order to turn the water on, I needed to fix a leak first. 

It was a quick easy fix and we were back in business. 

That was near the end of March. All was right in our water world until we received our monthly bill by email in early July. The bill said we had used triple our normal monthly usage from the third week in May to the third week in June and we were gone part of the time. That meant we had a pretty bad leak somewhere.

I called Dad and he went out on July 4 and shut the main water valve off at the road. At a later date he went out and turned on one valve at a time, we have three more, and determined the leak was near the very end of the line. It was somewhere after the valve at the barn.

There is an access pit by the barn where the valve is and it stays full of groundwater. We can turn the valve without draining the water, but I wanted to drain the water from it first thing and examine those fittings for leaks before I started digging.

I did not have a pump for the purpose, but I used a wet vac. It took a while, but it eventually got the job done.

Once the pit was empty, I turned on the valve and there were no visible leaks in the pit. As many gallons as we were losing, we figured a leak would be easy to spot once it was discovered.

In case you have not noticed, I was not looking for the leak in the most likely places to leak. I was looking for the leak in order of difficulty to reach, easiest first!😂

The next step was to dig the gravel out of the area in the barn where the water line comes up. The gravel around this line.

If that looked good then we would remove the gravel from around the hydrant outside and if that was dry then I would have to remove the dirt from the ditch where the water line was in the ground. I did not want to do that unless I absolutely had to do it.

Dad started removing gravel from around the line in the picture above. About 6-10 inches deep, he discovered the leak. Just below the valve I replaced in March was a fitting that reduced the line from 1" to 3/4". The fitting itself was leaking really bad right through the metal!

We removed that line, capped the 1" line and the leak was done! No removing the gravel from around the hydrant and no digging the ditch in search of a leak! Yay!!!

We lost several thousand gallons of water in less than two weeks of leaking, but praise God we did not lose it inside the house! The leak was actually in the best place and the easiest place to access for a fix.

Sometimes bad things are not near as bad as they could be or as bad as I imagine them to be. That is a good thing to remember.

Thank you for stopping by today.

Davy

Alabama and Nigeria

Good news: We now have a bit of internet in the BoggsMobile this week! One of the young men in the church worked out the problem and we are cruisin' now.

Bad news: I am having a hard time extracting pictures from the dusty archives and transferring them here for Vintage View Vednesday.

Good news: We still have plenty to talk about, because even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, our little globe continues to rotate at nearly 1000 MPH at the equator. Lots of things shake around at that speed and that creates all kinds of activities.

We are in revival this week at Midway Assembly near St. Stephens, Alabama for Pastor Lamar Chapman and his fine folks. We are having a wonderful time this week and we are loving every second of it.

Because the world is turned upside down, we are also preaching camp meeting in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria, West Africa at the same time.

Thankfully it is only 5964 miles from Christ Ambassadors Holiness Church in Abeokuta to Midway Assembly in St. Stephens, Alabama.

That is not too far if you say it real fast.

IF there was a bridge between Alabama and Ogun state and IF I could average 50 MPH in the BoggsMobile, day and night, I could make it from my commitment in Alabama to my commitment in Nigeria in 120 hours or about 5 days. I would only have to fill up the bus with diesel about 5 times each way.

IF I had a plane that could average 500 MPH, I could make the trip in 12 hours, but I would need an airport right next to Christ Ambassadors church and another in St. Stephens, Alabama. There must be a better way.

And there is a better way! Since US citizens are not cleared to enter Nigeria yet, I recorded the camp meeting services and posted them on YouTube. By the miracle of technology, I started preaching in Nigeria Wednesday morning only four to five hours after I finished preaching Tuesday night in Alabama.

I will be preaching twice a day for the rest of the week in Nigeria and preaching each night in Alabama without even cranking the bus, boarding a plane or whipping out my passport. That is a pretty good deal!

So we are thankful to be in revival and in camp meeting at the same time this week. Help us pray for revival and God's saints in Alabama and help us pray for camp meeting and God's saints in Nigeria too. May God help us all!

Thank you for stopping by today.

Davy

Too Close For Comfort-BoggsMobile

It is time to explain. We stopped off in Vonore, Tennesse and arrived in Alabama a week late. I need to catch you up on the details.

1995 Prevost XL

The last Saturday in August we left Bristol, Virginia on our way to LA, lower Alabama. As you know, we did not make it to Alabama, but detoured to our Tennessee home in Vonore, East Tennessee Luxury Coach. We count Jeff Rowe and all of his guys in Vonore as very dear friends, but we did not stop there because we were missing them. We had been there prior to going to Bristol, Virginia.

We went to Vonore for the same reason we often go to Vonore, because the BoggsMobile is sick or we are trying to prevent the BoggsMobile from becoming sick. This time the sickness was apparent, but we were not sure of the cause.

The symptoms that flared up hit a little to close to home for comfort. We had no choice but to do our best to get to the source of the problem.

Less than seven miles away from Grace Tabernacle in Bristol, we smelled brakes or something getting hot. I immediately suspected it was the right front wheel. The reason I suspected the right front wheel can be found in this post in June.

I used a phrase recently on the blog that I have uttered several times in discussing the BoggsMobile in conversation. When a bus glitch fixes itself, it is either a blessing, scary or both. This story is a great example of that.

When we first had this brake glitch in June, it fixed itself. We had driven over 3000 miles since then AND it had been thoroughly checked out in a shop. The problem would not duplicate in the shop and we were blessed to drive 3000+ trouble free miles.

But it is also scary. What caused the problem in the first place? AND what is stopping it from happening again? Unless you discover and correct the problem, it is always hanging over your head. You see, a blessing or scary or both?

Back to our exciting day

I got out of the bus as quickly as I could on the side of the road and went directly to the right front wheel. I did not even get to check the temperature because it was obvious there was a problem. There was fire behind the wheel where the brakes are located

Now, I do not want to oversell this story or add extra drama. But, when there is fire in your home where there is not supposed to be any fire, there is already drama enough and to spare. The bus was not burning down by any means, but every bus burning beside the road starts with a small flame. 

I know that and I have seen way too many videos of buses burning. It is etched in my mind and that is a good thing.

I went to the door and asked KJo for a fire extinguisher, we keep several handy. I gave the flame one small squirt from the extinguisher and it went out. Within two seconds it flamed up again and another squirt put it out for good. Hallelujah!

Bus Fire
What in the world? Where did a fire come from? I checked the temperature of the wheel and it was less than 150 degrees in all the places I could aim the temperature gun. I had KJo back the bus up a few feet because that will often adjust the brakes to open IF they are dragging.

I had her pull forward several feet and we could hear nothing rubbing or grinding and the bus was not pulling toward the right. Also, there was plenty of gear oil in the hub.

We decided to limp forward about two miles to a rest area and figure it out from there. I drove on the shoulder and we stopped three times in two miles. Each time there was no fire and the temperatures were good. Yes, I did take the fire extinguisher outside with me each time.😀

We pulled into an open spot at the rest area and the wheel temperatures were still good, plus the rain had stopped. Double good on that one!

At Jeff Rowe's suggestion, (Yes, amazingly he still takes my calls) we unhooked the Green Machine, put Odie in there and then listened to the wheel of the bus for any unfamiliar sounds as KJo backed it up and pulled it forward. The wheel bearings and brakes sounded perfect. We left the rest area driving separately and checked the temperatures every few miles for the first 40 miles or so.

Along the way, I would get over in the left lane when nothing was behind us and KJo would pull up next to the bus to see if she could see or hear anything unusual. All was well the whole 140+ miles to Vonore. Nothing in the wheel got unreasonably hot and more importantly, no fire!

Monday morning we pulled into the shop and Jeff's guys pulled off the wheel. You could see where I had shot the fire extinguisher on the caliper that is only nine months old.

A little extra of the fire extinguisher mush was also on the hub.

I think the consensus opinion is that there was some grease on the caliper and it ignited when the brake was dragging and the caliper got hot. But why was the brake dragging?

On close inspection, the caliper, slack adjuster and everything else seemed to be working fine, but we did get the problem to duplicate twice in only a few minutes. Everything pointed toward an air problem in Jeff's mind and he went to work on it.

There is a valve on the front of my bus that receives air and distributes air to each wheel when the brakes are applied. When I lift my foot off the brake, that same valve allows air to be discharged from the wheel and the brake releases.

Jeff began to suspect that the valve was not discharging properly so they replaced it. They also replaced the brake chambers on the front. Brake chambers are cheap those tow had not been changed in years. They also checked all the rest of the brakes and made sure everything was in adjustment.

New brake chamber

The front tires look great after about 21 months on the BoggsMobile.

By Thursday a test drive was determined a success and we were ready to go. I am reasonably sure this problem is behind us now, but you can rest assured I will keep a close eye on the wheel temperatures for quite a while, especially since shooting temps on wheels is something I do on a regular basis anyway.

Kelly Jo and I have discussed this a lot over the last week. We are doing everything we can to be diligent with bus maintenance. We have driven thousands of extra miles to get things checked out or changed out of an abundance of caution. We have not been lax, we have not ignored issues and we have not skimped on maintenance.

Sometimes things happen. Machinery breaks no matter how new it is or how little it is used. We use this bus and it costs us time, money and effort to keep it going. We are doing our best and we are not going to beat ourselves up over it.

We will lift our hands and voices and give praise to God for helping us. The last Saturday in August could have been a tragic day for us and for the BoggsMobile. Thank God it was not.

We also thank God for our friend Jeff Rowe and his guys at East Tennessee Luxury Coach in Vonore, Tennessee. May God bless him with good health and strength and great business opportunities!

Thank you for reading.

Davy