Drive a Jeep and get a laptop for free…

Well, that’s what happened to me recently but I do not want to suggest that anybody go through what I go through on a daily basis to be so blessed by a group of friends that I used to “wheel” with and see at “meet-n-greets” around the local area. You see, since 2004, I have belonged to a local club of four-wheel drive “rock crawlers” known as the Maryland Creepers. This is a great bunch of guys and gals that respect the environment and travel on approved trails through the mountains of Pennsylvania at places like Rausch Creek (and elsewhere) and sit around the campfire on Saturday evening telling “tall” stories of the adventures of the day like broken u-joints, grenaded diffs and even once in a while, a complete roll-over. Yeah, these folks do take their expensive and often highly modified 4-wheel drive vehicles and put them through some grueling tests of man and machine versus huge rocks and ledges. You’d have to go rock crawling one day with these folks to see just how addictive this sport is. It requires a lot of planning, good judgement, quick thinking and sometimes, sheer guts. Actually, there are probably some other things that go in-between those traits. One of them might be foolishness and/or insanity (according to my wife).

To make a long story short, some of the members of this off-road club got together and knowing that I was “laid up” in a hospital bed at home for close to two months, not to mention that I was spending more time in bed than in my powerchair at my desk where my desktop computer is all sprawled out, decided that I needed a laptop computer. Now a laptop computer was something that I always considered a luxury and would probably never be able to afford one as long as I maintained a desktop model. Besides, I like the larger monitor and keyboard.

But when laid up in bed, access to the desktop computer is impossible. That stinks!

As many of you all know, my entire ministry since 1999 has been online and since 2005, the ministry has taken me to new corners of the earth communicating with others that are somehow affected by a similar disease to mine known as MELAS. This can be a cruel disease of daily pain, frequent hospitalizations and a host of other nasty symptoms that come with no known cure. And as I spent more and more time in bed, my time on the Internet was dwindling. As that occurred, my E-mails began to get backlogged and folks started to wonder where I was. My cyber-friends are some of the closest friends that I have outside of my immediate family and friends. And there is one difference with my cyber-friends. Many of them know exactly how I feel on a day-to-day basis because they are afflicted with the same deadly disease.

My friends at the Maryland Creepers had also noticed a drop in my frequency of visitations to their online forum and participation in the day-to-day discussions. With a few thousand “posts” under my belt, quite a few knew who “Wheelin Rev” was on the forum. The “wheelin” part naturally originated for my love of off-road driving in a Jeep which began back in my college days as early as 1976. More recently, with the loss of my driver’s license due to my declining health, the “wheelin” part still lives as I now terrorize the family zooming around in my powerchair at speeds up to 6.5 miles per hour. Inside a house, that really is FAST! The “rev” part has always been and will always be my Calling to preach the Gospel whenever and wherever called. Many times it is one-on-one to those who are hurting or just want to talk about my hope in Jesus Christ and the life I have to look forward to when God is through using this broken, sinful body on Earth.

Getting back to the sub-group of members of the Maryland Creepers and what they did to bless me in indescribable proportions, they got together without my knowledge and pooled their funds to purchase me a Dell Latitude D600 laptop computer! When I was finally told about this, I was speechless. I would have never guessed that my friends at the Maryland Creepers would make such a generous gift to me. Then again, seeing how these folks react in other situations of “broken” 4×4s in the middle of nowhere on a top of a mountain; I’ve seen them “donate” pieces of their perfectly good vehicles to that of a damaged one just so the club member could drive the vehicle off the mountain that day. Even back at home, I have seen these folks give away at no cost items that another member had need of. No questions asked; no thank you needed.

I mean these folks rock; literally in more ways than one!

So… Here I am as the laptop “sees” me laid up in bed.

The surgical mask is something I must wear for another 4 weeks as my body recovers from a staph infection that nearly killed me a while back. As you can see, I am wired for sound but not for medical reasons. Electronics has been my lifetime hobby and I have collected a lot of “junque” through the years. What you see around my hospital bed at home is but a small snapshot of the clutter around me. I have always wondered whether the disease I have is going to kill me one day or whether a collapse of my equipment around me might bury me alive. I guess time will tell.

As for the laptop that was given to me by some of my fellow members at the Maryland Creepers, this is what it looks like, well, err, in my lap.

So… there you have it folks. I cannot express how much joy and opportunities the Maryland Creepers have given me with this gift. My access to the world as a homebound person is the computer. And from my hospital bed, as of now, is my new laptop computer. Again, to all of the folks that made this gift a reality for me, I pray that God will bless you 100-fold because without this gift, my life on the Internet had ended. And once that happens, my access to others that give me the encouragement to travel onward, comes to a standstill. I cannot imagine my life without the Internet and all of my cyber-friends. Now I am assured that I can stay in touch with them wherever I may be.

God bless the Maryland Creepers!

Pastor Dave