Wheels of Faith

A few weeks ago, I received a friend request on Facebook, from a woman I didn't know. That happens occasionally, and I usually just delete the request. But, this time, the last name was one I recognized, so I left the request alone, and decided to wait and see what happened. I didn't have to wait long. One evening, a few days later, Brenda Bullock called me and explained who she was. And, just like that, a wealth of memories came flooding back to me.

This story begins about forty-five years ago, when I was in high school. When my new friend, Shari Luehring, was a freshman at Fairbury High School, she boarded in town with her grandma during the week, and drove home for the weekends, because home was more than half an hour away, even when the weather was good, down on the Kansas state line near Hollenberg. That year, Shari and I got together often after school, at her grandma's house, to play guitars and sing together. By the time we were sophomores, Shari's brother, Bruce, joined her at high school, so the two of them shared the driving duties back and forth every day, as long as the roads were good. But we still played guitars together sometimes, and I even joined Shari for an occasional weekend at her house, way out in the "boonies."

The spring of our junior year, Shari asked if I would like to join a high school traveling ministry group, sponsored by her pastor, Joe Bullock. The group, called the Wheels of Faith, was going to take an extended trip to the east coast that summer. I was excited at the thought of going so far away. Even though I was born at Fort Benning, in Georgia, I hadn't been any further east than Iowa since my family returned to Nebraska when I was three months old. I was anxious to see my birthplace, and besides, I loved to camp and sing and spend time with other Christian teens, so I was thrilled at the very thought of the trip.

Shari knew I had been writing some songs, so she asked if I could help her write a theme song for the group. As I recall, I had already written a chorus and a tune for some verses, so Shari and I worked together to add some lyrics for the verses of my unfinished song. We practiced together for several weeks to get ready for the trip, and I think we put together a songbook, too, since we would be the song leaders for the group that year.

The Wheels of Faith Theme Song

Look, world! No hands! Someone up above is holding me!

Look, world! No hands! Someone is holding me high!

The Wheels of Faith are rolling, rolling 'round the world.

The Wheels of Faith are rolling as we help to spread God's Word.

Jesus died to save us. This we surely know.

And now He's with us all the time, no matter where we go.

Jesus Christ is Lord! Is the message that we bring.

And as we travel o'er the earth, this is what we sing.

Look, world! No hands! Someone up above is holding me!

Look, world! No hands! Someone is holding me high!

I must admit that I was a little surprised when Mom and Dad said I could go. We scraped together the $50 I needed to help pay for gas and food, packed up a duffle bag and my guitar, and met the rest of the group down at the Lutheran Church near Lanham, on the Kansas side of the road. There, we loaded up two vans and started on our adventure.

 

I already knew Shari and her brother, Bruce, and our friend, Ellen, who also joined us for the trip, but I enjoyed getting to know a lot of other people, too. The six of us from Nebraska were certainly outnumbered by the Kansas kids, but we always chimed in, loudly, to correct anyone who assumed that the whole group was from Kansas.

 

I'm a little foggy about some of the details, and I'm not always sure which trip I'm remembering, since I joined the group the following summer, too, but I can say that our trip was definitely an adventure. We camped in tents most nights, one for the boys and one for the girls, but we also stayed in private homes once in a while.

 

We checked in with several Lutheran churches along the way, wherever Pastor Bullock or, as we called him, Daddy Joe, had pastor-friends he had met at seminary. Sometimes we did odd jobs around a church, like washing windows or painting walls. At some churches, we gathered together with local youth for a meal and fellowship. At least once, we passed out VBS flyers to neighborhood families. And everywhere we went, we sang, around a campfire, at nursing homes, at a children's hospital, and even with a choir one Sunday morning.

I remember being a bit overwhelmed by all of the trees lining the highway in Georgia. I was surprised at the number of Asian families who lived in Norfolk, Virginia. Like many of the kids on our trip, I was excited to swim in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. I learned to love Spam and American cheese sandwiches, spread with a little thousand island dressing, and eaten alongside the road for a cheap noon meal, with homemade cookies for dessert. I remember working with the other girls for most of one night in a KOA laundry room, washing and drying mountains of clothes for the whole group, but I don't remember which girl embroidered a flower on some male's underwear while we waited for the rest of the laundry to dry. The Little Rock zoo was the first real zoo I ever visited. Like the other girls, I was so happy when someone made arrangements for us to take showers one morning, at a community pool in Little Rock. (I don't think the boys cared whether they showered, or not, but we were glad they did!)

The following year, Wheels of Faith made the trek to a Lutheran campground in Canada, where we helped with some clean-up and construction. That year, we had a small enough group to fit in just one van and a car. I think that was the year the van pulled a pop-up camper for the five girls to sleep in. Canada was cold enough for jeans and jackets, even in August, but we enjoyed the experience of living in a different country, where the grocery store labels were all printed in French, as well as English, and where we had to go through customs to leave and re-enter the U.S. The lake at the campground was too cold to swim in, but we took out a boat, and some of the kids went fishing, with limited success.

 

One day, the girls picked enough wild blueberries to make pies for supper, without a recipe or oven, I might add. But Shari Siemsen knew what she was doing, so the pies were delicious.

 

We left Canada a little sooner than we had planned, for reasons that are better left unsaid. However, Daddy Joe knew an inner-city pastor in Chicago, so we continued our adventure in the big city. I remember visiting a run-down mission, and a big, old, brick Lutheran church. That part of Chicago was sketchy, to say the least. It was an eye-opening experience for all of us naive white kids from Kansas and Nebraska.

 

The girls slept in sleeping bags on the living room floor of an old house near the church, where a couple of youth group girls lived with their family. They seemed as excited as we were to get to know some Lutheran teenagers from a different part of the country. We read our Bibles together, and talked a lot about city life versus rural life.

We also toured the Lutheran seminary in Chicago, with its beautiful, blue, stained glass windows, before heading back home to the Kansas-Nebraska state line.

Brenda's call certainly jogged my memory, and the pictures that I uploaded to the Wheels of Faith Facebook page, along with pictures posted by other group members, helped me remember the trips we took so long ago. I wish I could have seen the other "kids," now all in their fifties and sixties, who were once part of the Wheels of Faith ministry, and I would have loved to spend some time talking to Brenda's dad, Daddy Joe, again. Unfortunately, the 450 miles between me and the Wheels of Faith Reunion in Kansas was just too far this time, but I was glad to revisit the Wheels of Faith once again through Facebook.

I hadn't thought about Wheels of Faith in quite some time, but I can honestly say that those trips broadened my horizons and strengthened my faith. I guess that was the whole point, wasn't it?

Thanks, Brenda, for organizing the reunion. And thanks, Daddy Joe, for shepherding so many groups of kids all over North America!

(I knew Brenda's last name sounded familiar.)