this was sent to me by one of my beloved youth ministry buddies. sad for them, but it was a pick-me-up that gave me a much needed giggle.
We did the 30 hour famine over the weekend and went on a can food drive through a neighborhood near the church. We were gone for about 2 hours gathering food. We drove our old church van and we were having trouble keeping it running while we were in the neighborhood. We got going and started back to the church and it died on top of a hill at a dangerous curve on Arno Road. It wouldn't start and it started to smoke, I looked under the hood and more smoke started coming out, black smoke. We got the kids out of the van and away from it and the smoke increased, it started to flame up and within minutes, it was fully in flames. It looked like a marshmallow that had been set on fire and then blow out. After getting the kids out of the van, I called 911 and the fire truck came but by the time they had gotten there, the van was completely destroyed. We were able to get the kids back to the church before it really started to burn and of course they were upset that they were not allowed to stay to see it burn.
So needless to say, it was quite an exciting lock in and famine. All of the can food was destroyed in the fire, we could hear cans exploding, the van never exploded like you see on TV, but the windows blew out and the tires blew out.
I told some people at church that God had told us to go to the top of the hill and offer a burnt offering, after we discerned that He didn't mean a junior high boy, we realized He meant the van. We are fortunate that nobody was hurt and that the trees around it didn't catch on fire either. There is a black stain on the road and I think some metal that melted from the van on the road also.
The kids were somewhat scared but more mad about the can food that was destroyed that they collected while fasting, I asked the church today to consider bringing in food to replace what was lost.
See you in a couple of weeks, anybody else need to sacrifice a van?
