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The Six Million Dollar Van
Sat., Aug. 2. 2003 12:27am EDT
Thanks to all of you who wrote with your concerns, encouragement and prayers regarding our van troubles last week. I'll give you the update in a nutshell:
When I last reported to you, we were sitting inside our 15-passenger Dodge van on board a flatbed truck towing our trailer and bound for Emporia KS. It was Tuesday, and we weren't scheduled to play Emporia until Friday, so we had a good head start. Unfortunately, we were due in Bastrop TX and Brownsville TX on Wednesday and Thursday.
Well, the good news is that the Dodge dealer was able to figure out what was wrong with our van and they had it fixed by Friday. In the meantime, they rented us vehicles and we were able to make it to both concerts in Texas on time without hitting any of that hurricane weather the people in Texas were worried about. That bad news is our van's engine was shot, and it cost us $7000 for a new reconditioned engine, on top of the $300-plus it took to repair the gas pump we accidentally broke that same afternoon, the $300 for the new radiator earlier that afternoon, and the $75 for the new radiator at the start of the day.
However, by Saturday, we were able to drive our own van to the concert in Camdenton MO (had some great conversations with the guys in Disciple and Riley Armstrong while we were there). Unfortunately, the trip home blew out the transmission (We knew it was going to need replaced soon), and the van is once again in the shop. That's going to cost another $1500-2000.
Can anyone say: It's time to offer that cracked CD sale again? Well, we will, and I've included that information at the end of this email, but before we go any further, I have to say: These unforeseen expenses are hitting us at a really bad time, so please pray for us. However, we are confident that God will provide, as He always has, and we praise Him that we were able to make every single concert last week. And we also started playing a few new songs on this tour, parodies that are scheduled to be included on our next CD (Sorry no deadline for that one yet, although we'd love to have it out by the end of the year!)
It just so happens that we have received a ton of encouraging emails this week from people whose lives have been changed by God working through ApologetiX, and I'd like to share those with you, because they are really exciting (See Section #6, "Encouragement from Everywhere.") But first, here's the concert info for this week:
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