The Great American Journey

GAP WALK JOURNALS - VII

Sunday - September 21, 2008 Day 200 0.0 miles

Total New York miles - 33.2 Walking Days - 94

Washington D.C. miles - 4.6 Cumulative miles 1688.8

This has been one busy, fun, frustrating, hectic day. It began with having to leave our motel at 7:30 for Hackettstown to arrive at Trinity Methodist by 8:15 a m. That all went fine, and we gave Keith, the sound man, our flash drive with the presentation on it. He got it up and running on their system with no problem.

Then at about 9 a m the youth gathered for singing and announcements, and then I was introduced to share. Interestingly enough they are talking about prayer in this group (I believe last Sunday, today, and next Sunday). How appropriate that God “just happened” to time this series with my being here to share about prayer walking the USA.

When that session was over we talked with a few of the youth, then went over to the church service. It was a great service with Pastor Frank Fowler preaching on a portion of Psalm 23 - “He restores my soul; He leads me in paths of righteousness for His names sake.”

We talked with Bonny briefly, then headed back to our motel where we had leftovers to heat up for lunch. Each of us had leftover steak, and I had enough tortellini for us both. It really was a good lunch.

Then I went out to the van to do some major rearranging and sorting. That took about an hour and a half. I had moved Lady Mag down to a shady spot to work, and when I finished I turned the key to move her back to our spot, but all I got was that dreadful clicking sound of a dead battery. I called AAA and they came out in just over half an hour. It took about 10 seconds to get her started.

Now we needed to keep her running for awhile, so we decided to drive out to Liberty Park to see ahead of time how to get there. Well, the route the GPS took us was really crazy - traffic was wild, and it took us about an hour and a half. It should have taken thirty to forty minutes.

I decided to take us back into Newark via the route I had walked in July. That went well to a certain point, then we found ourselves in a left turn lane with no hope of getting over. So we went left, then tried to come back. We saw a sign for I-280 and followed that, but that turned out to be only I-280 E, and we needed to go west.

In our search to get to I-280 W we made a right turn back onto Market Street (by this time it was dark, and we didn’t see the “No Turn” sign). Instantly the red lights of a police car came on. He was very nice, but insisted he had to give a summons with a small fine (still more than we needed to add to our expenses right now). He said it was on camera, and he didn’t feel like hassling with explaining that away, and also he had just given another ticket to someone else for the same thing, and they had waited to see if he gave us one. I guess they weren’t too happy with their summons either.

At least we could now ask him for directions back to I-280 W. We thanked him, and headed off. Now we were on our way, and finally arrived back at our motel, with a stop for gas first.

Now we took care of the things we needed to get done tonight, and got stuff ready for an early departure tomorrow morning for our trip out to the Statue of Liberty.

Thank you Lord for Your presence in every situation - even this experience tonight. God always seems to bring good out of each circumstance, and I’m sure He will with this one as well.

Good night all.