This has not been a good couple of months for our car.

It all started at the beginning of November, when we were involved in an accident. We had just arrived in Vilnius from Kiev by plane. We were driving back to Klaipeda when we stopped at a gas station. As I got out of the car, another car came flying in off the highway, skidded on the snow, and hit our car at high speed. This caused sufficient damage to our car that it had to be in the shop for ten days.

We then took it for inspection, which we have to do once a year. It failed. They gave us a list of things that needed to be fixed. We just got the car back Friday. The bill came to $550. The same day, we received a notice from the missionary board of the Episcopal church saying that we had run out of funds. Apparently, not as many people donated to our work this year.

Today I was going in for a final exam. The car was not working well on propane, as it kept backfiring. So I switched over to gasoline. Whenever our car backfires, it pops out a sponge that blocks a hole in the cover of the air filter. When I got to school, I opened the hood to put to sponge back, I decided that instead of putting the sponge back I would put our the raging fire that was taking up about a third of the engine space.

Apparently, the backfiring had ignited the air filter, which in turn ignited the plastic air filter cover. I put the fire out and went into my office to call my wife. As the phone was ringing at home, I noticed out my window that the car had once again burst into flames. So I had to go back outside and put it out again. This time, it completely burned up the air filter cover, several of the wires in the vicinity, and burned a hole in the battery so that it was leaking acid.

Needless to say, I was a little late for the final exam.

If anyone is interested in supporting a missionary family teaching biblical studies in Lithuania, now would be a really great time to donate. We only have five more months in our three year contract and I would hate to have to cut short our work here. If you would like to support our work, please contact me at kwilson@LCC.lt.

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