one of the big memories from our trip to the gurus conference was the beloved red beast – our ’94 ford econoline van. its a beauty. the muffler popped off before we left town (glad i was driving rose’s car) and well let’s just say it was the butt of many jokes the whole three days. on the way home, we weren’t even out of louisville when i got a call from kevin saying he had blown a tire. so we answered the larger question of…how many new hopers does it take to change a tire? …all of them. that done we decided the spare was a bit gnarly so we located the closest walmart and made an investment. thinking we had the destination of home in our sites we set off again. this time the muffler started dragging (about 12 miles from walmart) so we pulled over to fix it. then…a few hours later…109 miles from home… i’m on the phone with kevin…he had just called…and i hear “bwosshhh” and sure enough another tire blew and took out the rear heater connection which meant we were completely stranded. 
we did some creative rearranging and providentially our executive assistant was about 20 miles away and helped to transport the rest of the team back home. kevin and i decided in all our years of doing student ministry (and this wasn’t even a student ministry trip!) i’ve never made these kind of memories. hope we don’t ever again. but yeah…journey is more important than destination. had lots of time to connect.