Things were humming right along. The motorhome project was out of my hands and being taken care of. I was hauling containers around southern BC and Washington making decent money.
And I was lonely.
We used to have a paper called The Buy & Sell. I guess we still do but it’s all online now. Anyway, I discovered that they had a new feature, personal ads. Bingo! I put my amazing self out there, hoping to find a good woman who could become my wife.
Around the same time, the guy I was driving for offered me a new gig, running team between Vancouver and Toronto once a week. It paid really well, $1400 cash per trip, and we were going to get a brand new Peterbilt. Of course, team operations means that the truck never stopped except to load, unload and get fuel. And I had no idea who my co-driver would be. I said why not and away we went.
My new co-driver, Ken, seemed like an ok guy and we hit the road, hell bent for Toronto. I noticed pretty quickly that his driving skills left a little to be desired, but $1400 cash a week, so I knuckled down and drove. I would joke that I drove while he slept and laid awake while he drove. It didn’t take long before we started to get on each others nerves, and the tension was getting intense.
We’d been at it for a month or so when I stopped by my mail box and there was a letter from a lady who answered my ad. She said she loved trucks and truckers and wanted to learn how to drive one herself. And that she really liked my profile and wanted to meet. She included her phone number but this was way before cell phones so I had to call her from a land line when I had a chance. We talked for a couple of hours and really hit it off, promising to meet up as soon as we could. The only problem was that she lived in the Okanagan which was way off of our usual route.
Now there was another young lady who drove for the same outfit, hauling containers and we seemed to get along well enough, but, due to my lack of confidence, I never did ask her out. I was at home one evening and she called me. And, like the complete idiot I was, I told her I was seeing someone else, and she hung up on me. Why am I so slow to learn? I had never even seen this other woman.
One night when it was my shift, I was driving through a snowstorm in Saskatchewan and being bored, I started to search for “skip” on the AM radio. (Skip is a phenomenon where AM radio signals bounce off the atmosphere at night from all around the world) I had the volume down to where I could just hear it, trying not wake Ken up, and was slowly turning the dial hoping to find something to listen to to keep me awake. I heard, “This is 14CFUN, Vancouvers best rock! … He shoots he scorrrrres! … a country station, a hard rock station, a bit of a talk show. And then as I was almost to the end of the dial, “You! Listening on the radio right now! Don’t turn that dial! God has a message for you!” I heard Ken yell from the bunk, “Turn that bleeping crap off!” Well, just we weren’t getting along, I turned it up. “God has a life changing message for you! He wants you to know that He loves you and that he sent His only Son to die for your sins! It’s not an accident that you’re listening to this right now, He has a wonderful plan for your life and you can know Him personally!” Again, Ken yelled for me to turn it off. I kept listening. “This is RW Shambach and we’re having a tent revival in (I forget where) Louisiana. God wants to tell you that you must be born again and all you have to do is believe, repent and receive His forgiveness for your sins…” And the skip faded away.
Well, that sure gave me a lot to think about. I’d never heard the Gospel before and now I had. I drove into the night and pondered what I had just heard.