How I got a free ride in the Spam Can, a P-51 Mustang

I want to tell you how obedience can give great reward. I mentioned this in my first lens http://www.squidoo.com/web-guru-ha/. How I received the ride of my life worth $600 for free in the Spam Can.

It started in 1986 when my wife Lois and I sold our Mercedes Benz repair shop and our home to go full time in ministry to prisoners, criminal type that is. I had been a volunteer chaplain in the Idaho prison system for several years and we were led to go full time.

January 1, 1987 we left Boise for Coeur d'Alene where we were to work with the jail there to get a jail ministry started and get the local churches to carry on the ministry. We were there till June then went to Boise for a short time while we looked for where to go next.

I found that out on a trip to Eastern Idaho and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On the way through Blackfoot, Id. I stopped at the jail there and found they were ready to move into a new facility and the jail administrator was delighted to make me chaplain of the jail. We moved to Blackfoot and took the jail ministry but also State Hospital South, a state mental hospital.

There was a crop duster in town that had a P-51 and for $200 you could get a good ride in it. I wanted a ride real bad but living on donated money I could not justify spending money like that.

I used to go to the airport to look at that plane and talk about it - drool over it! You see, I am a pilot myself and love to fly. When we were in Coeur d'Alene another Christian evangelist flew up to look at a pick-up I had for sale and bought the pick-up and left me his airplane to use. Blessed? You Bet. We had that plane to fly all the time we were there and got to see a lot of beautiful Northern Idaho from the air.

Anyway, fast forward to 2003, a lot of water under the bridge you might say. We had been on several mission trips to Asia and Guatemala since leaving Blackfoot and were in the trucking business. We had been all over the good old USA, but now were leased to a little company here in Nampa, Id. and only ran the Northwest. My brother was one of the owners of the company and his son, worked there also. The son, Max was building an RV7 right close to the Warhawk Air Museum at Nampa airport.

One day brother Hop asked me if I wanted a ride in a P-51, you see the museum was having the P-51 invitational to raise money and you could get a ride for only $600. I told Hop sure but I could not justify spending $600 for one. He said "I didn't ask if you wanted to spend $600 but do you want a ride"? I said sure not knowing what was coming, he said "ok".

It was a while before I found out the particulars and Max was a little unhappy with Hop because he wanted to surprise me with it.

Max spent a lot of time at the museum while building his plane and helped there quite a bit. They told him if he would sell 5 of those $600 memberships they would give him one. He went to work and sold one to the bank, but can you believe that no one at the bank wanted the ride? Hard to figure isn't it? But that is where it came from.

One of the Keywords I used in this site is "obedience". I mention this because I could have had a ride for $200 in Blackfoot but was obedient to the LORD and be a good steward of what He was supplying us with. It meant a lot more to me I think because when I got it I knew where it came from.