Urgent Need! The Campus Outreach Team is Stranded, and Van's Transmission Needs to be Rebuilt!

Urgent Help Needed!  Our transmission needs to be rebuilt -- help us get our van back on the road!

The Sprinter

Dear Friend,

The day before we left for our tour of the Bay Area and Sacramento, I received the sobering news that our transmission was shot.  I just spoke to our mechanic, and the total to fix our van is staggering: $3870.49

In order to be able to pick up the van when we get home on September 30th, we will need to have that money raised to pay our mechanic.  Please help us by donating now  to meet our goal of $3870.49 before we get home!

Right now, we are driving our 15-passenger gas-guzzling Chevy van -- the "gold van."  It is cramped and expensive.  We keep this extra van for camp and for emergencies at home.  We never anticipated taking it on a tour.

Our "Gold Van"...tight quarters

Last week, I took our Sprinter van to the mechanic for a routine scan, knowing that we would be putting over 1,000 miles on it during our trip to Northern California and back.  We had 2 days until the Campus Outreach Team was scheduled to leave, which should have been plenty of time.  We'd been noticing occasional problems, but had been told that they were part of normal wear and tear.  After all, the van has over 275,000 miles on it.  

Our mechanic told me not to worry... yet.  He is a good guy, a Christian, and an honest mechanic (which, we all know, is hard to find).  He knows what we do, and supports our mission to end abortion.  

He told me that we would have the van back by Friday morning, so we began praying.  When noon on Friday rolled around, I started to wonder.  The shop closes at 5, and we still needed to pack for our trip, which meant finding room for 25 BOXES of literature, bins, signs, suitcases, banners, t-shirts, and other odds and ends.

I received this call at 4:40:  

"Bad news. The transmission needs to be rebuilt,” said our mechanic,  “You can’t drive it. ...I’m sorry.”

My eyes filled with tears. I was speechless, thinking about all of the plans we had already made for events up north.

"Kristina?” came the voice at the other end, worried. The mechanic knew this was a problem.

I pulled myself together and asked what we would need to do to leave on time with our van.

He told me that if he dropped all of his other jobs and just worked on our van, which he was willing to do because he wanted us to continue our mission, then he could have it done by Wednesday, 4 DAYS after we needed to leave.

Rather than cancel any of our campus stops, we decided to leave the Sprinter at the shop and take the gold van.  Within minutes, I was screeching out of our office parking lot in my little sedan to drop the team off at the mechanic's, where they unloaded the parked and broken Sprinter.  They crammed our Campus Outreach literature and supplies into my car and WALKED our 5x3 signs to the office on hand trucks.  

Our team is used to spiritual opposition before a big event or trip.  We always joke that our printers break before anything important happens.  And they actually do!  However, that day, I only wished it had been the printers  that had broken.  I would take a broken printer over a broken van any day.  

Inside the Sprinter, our baby-saving bus!

Our van has been given many affectionate names over the years.  One team called it "The Baby Bus."  Another called it "Big Bertha."  Seth Drayer of Created Equal calls it "The White Whale."  Sometimes, it's even called the "Pro-Life Party Bus."  But it gets us where we need to go: in the thick of it, exposing abortion and saving lives.

Will you help us put The Baby Bus, Big Bertha, The White Whale, OUR SPRINTER, back on the road?  Donate $25, $50, $100, or $200 now to help us meet our goal of $3870.49.

We cannot continue Campus Outreach without a reliable vehicle.  Our Sprinter has served us well since we bought it in 2005.  We have more than paid off the cost of vehicle with what we save in gas with its diesel engine.

A very-packed packed  gold van just prior to early AM departure

We didn’t finish packing until 10:30 pm Friday night.  The next morning, we took off early to honor our preborn brothers and sisters at the Memorial for Unborn Victims of Abortion we were helping to host at a cemetery in Riverside.  Then we made our way up the coast to reach campuses in Monterey Bay, CA.  We are now on our way to Sacramento, CA, and the mechanic is still working on our van.  

If anyone ever asks, "Do we really mean it? Are we truly dedicated to defending the preborn, and protecting women?  Will we really let nothing stop us?"  We can answer this: A dead transmission, walking the signs back to the office in 100 degree weather, and driving hundreds of miles in a cramped gas-guzzler with 25 boxes of literature, really will put a damper on the most intense resolve.  But we did.

Yeah, we really mean it.  

Please, pray for the Campus Outreach Team. We may not have allowed discouragement to get the best of us, but we know that the Evil One does not want us to continue our life-saving work.  We are making this tour of Northern California with the last of our resource  s, surviving on faith and the donations of the kind people we are meeting along the way.

Thank you, friend, for your help and your support.  

Fiat Vita,

Kristina