The Adventure Begins

It’s official – we are on the road! It’s taken a lot of sleepless, greasy nights to get to this point, but it was worth it. Our tour bus (Veggie) is currently going 60 down I-94 just outside of Chicago, hitting every pothole the highway can throw at us. So you might be asking yourself, what is Veggie and why are we on this road trip? Let me give you a brief synopsis of how we got to this point…

As many of you already know, Nick, Todd and I started a mission organization called Next Step Ministries about two years ago. We have been diligently planning and building an awesome team of support around us to make sure that our kick-off summer in 2009 will be a huge success. About 6 months ago, we came up with the idea of taking a summer road trip to recruit students and spread the word about Next Step Ministries. We didn’t know how we would be getting around or where we would go, but we felt called. We really wanted to meet face-to-face with hundreds of pastors, youth directors and students around the country to find out what they wanted in a mission organization and how we could help them. With that goal in mind, we set out to make it happen.

We decided that Nick and I would be the ones taking the road trip as Todd held down the fort in Wisconsin. Now as much as I like Nick, the idea of being crammed in a single car with him all summer wasn’t the must appealing idea, but that was our plan. We would take one of our vehicles across the country, staying with family and friends at night and the occasional Super 8. We wanted a bigger vehicle to travel in, but with very little money and the rising cost of gas, our options were limited. If we were to get better travel arrangements, it would have to be a God thing.

Enter Bryan Rutkosky. Bryan was part of the first response to Hurricane Katrina and has been working in Hancock County, Mississippi for almost three years. Hancock County was the official ground zero of Katrina and the most devastated area. Houses weren’t only flooded, they were completely obliterated for miles and miles. We had been working with people in the area planning to run trips there in 2009, when Nick happened to run into Bryan. The two quickly hit it off and much to Nick’s excitement, he found out that Bryan ran an organization called Dream Fuel International that provided alternative energy sources for vehicles and homes. Bryan owned three buses that he had converted to run 100% on waste-oil and before Nick could even ask, Bryan offered to give us one of the buses to travel in during our summer road trip. In addition, he had some friends at a company called Signs and Wonders that would provide decals for our bus. All of a sudden we had a bus plastered with our organization’s logos that ran on free gas. That was definitely a God thing.

Nick and I continued to work hard to get everything in line for our summer trip, juggling finals and work in the background until the final day came. It was five in the morning on May 17th when Nick called and told me to look outside. Driving up was jet-black bus, honking the entire way up the driveway. It was time for our road trip to begin.

After saying goodbye to our friends and family, we left Madison and headed up to Milwaukee for a brief appearance on Today’s TMJ4. Click here to check it out! We then took off to make the long trek out to Ann Arbor, Michigan for our first set of meetings, which is where you will find us now, crusin’ down the interstate.

This is going to be an awesome summer and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Keep checkin’ this blog for pictures, videos and more stories from the road.