Chapter Thirteen

The Bus from North Bend

The blessings and the provisions of the Lord are encouraging all of the time. Sometimes they can be comical as well. Our first effort at a bus ministry was simply my wife going out in our little Volkswagen rabbit and picking up two or three children. That worked pretty well until we had two children of our own.

By and by George Simmons expressed interest in a bus ministry for our church. There was an area in Astoria commonly known as "dog patch" It was the Blue Ridge neighborhood and I had a burden for the families there, especially the children. Our financial resources were just about nothing but I brought up our burden for a bus ministry at a pastors' fellowship meeting. Pastor Roy Meksch, from North Bend Bible Baptist Church, North Bend, OR, offered to give us a bus and within a little time the McKenzies and the Simmons were on our way to North Bend to pick it up.

The bus turned out to have some "character." It was a "hodge podge" of a machine. I will not remember the exact combination but it was something like a 1950's model International bus body with a 1965 Ford engine, 1967 Pontiac transmission and 1969 Chevrolet carburetor. The year was 1985.

With a little coaxing we managed to get the thing started and off we went with our proud new ministry accessory. We hadn't gotten from North Bend to Astoria before Brother George and I agreed we couldn't in good conscience put children on that bus. It sat outside our building for the better part of a year when I was offered some new pews for our church building.

The seats we had in the building were also given to us. They were wooden theater seats and had served in several church plants before our own. We were thankful to have them as before we were sitting on home made benches. Berean Baptist Church in Pendleton, OR had given them to us and they served us well. Only trouble was that the laminate seats were beginning to separate and splinter and it was not at all uncommon for a lady to ruin her nylons on the seats and once in a while they would get a pretty good splinter in the leg. Greater Portland Baptist Church had just purchased new pews and offered to give us their old ones. They were home made, but much nicer than our home made benches and much less dangerous for the ladies than our theater seats.

Mark Rowland and I headed to Portland in the old bus to pick up the pews. We rattled along through Clatskanie and into Longview all right, but when we got to I-5 the bus began to make "different" sorts of sounds. The sounds got louder and louder until we decided we had best pull over at the Ridgefield exit. I called Anita who came to pick us up. We left the bus there and rented a u-haul to get the pews back to the church. Brother Simmons came back a day or so later tightened the lifter nuts on the bus and drove it home. We sold the thing to Brother Simmons' son.

The last I ever heard about the bus was when the police called me about it being abandoned along the road somewhere near Portland I think. I informed the police that we had sold it a year or two earlier (apparently Brother George's son had not bothered to get a new title for it). I learned to do the transfer of title page to the department of motor vehicles myself.