One of Those Days

I have had one of those days. In my 8 years of being employed by the Mission, I have found that nothing ever goes to plan.

My intentions were to repair the air conditioner that runs half of the upstairs of the Men's Shelter. I started off by getting the freon out of the system. I was getting all of our equipment out, I found out I was out of sil-floss, the stuff you need to solder the pipe together. I had to run to the parts store and get more. By the time I got back, it was empty of freon. So I took all the gauges off and proceeded to but all the malfunctioning parts out of the system. Easy enough. I went to put the new expansion valve on and found out that the pipe sizes didn't match up. No big deal, I bought reducers and extra lengths of pipe just in case. I put everything together and started soldering. When I finished, I went to get my inspection mirror to make sure that I soldered everything correctly and I would have no leaks. Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found. Irritating. We looked all over the van for it and couldn't find it. My helper just cleaned my tool bag out the day before, and he said it wasn't in there. I figured we would make it without it. I am pretty good so there should be no leaks. Wrong again. We pressure tested the lines and found a huge leak on the line. It is an amazingly tight space, so I kept working in getting it sealed. I am a bit claustrophobic as well, and that didn't help things.

Very frustrating morning. Time got away from me, so we headed downstairs to get some lunch. I was so ticked that this thing wasn't working out like I hoped it would. Usually, something like this shouldn't take a couple of hours. I am already on hour 3. While I was sitting down eating, one of our pastors came up to me and told me that he had something for me, something very important. He handed me a little folded up note. The paper on the outside said to make sure that this note got to me, and that it was a note from my son. Chance had written me a letter that said, "Dad, I miss you and love you. Your son, Chance." I got teary eyed. Apparently the group he is on mission with this week wrote a whole bunch of notes to the guests at the Shelter to encourage them, and Chance wrote a special letter to me. It was very encouraging, it made my day. I struggle a lot with Chance. I love him so much, and I know he loves me. But we are constantly in to it. I know it's a teenage thing, but it's hard on both of us. One day, I hope we can look back at the fights we get into and laugh.

Anyway, back to work, and it didn't get any better. Still leaks in the lines. We hunted them all down without a mirror. We pressure tested everything again and found that we got all of the big leaks fixed, but we still had one small leak. We found it in a bypass line of the valve. It is a very small line that is attached to a 1 inch copper line by a flare fitting. We took the wrench to it and tried to tighten it down but it still leaked. The fitting that the valve line attached to was leaking at the base of the fitting where it met the 1 inch line. This fitting was on the back side of the pipe, where you couldn't really see it, more a less take a torch to it to weld the hole shut. We had to have the mirror. We went back down to the van and still didn't find it. I told my helper to look in the tool bag again, and sure enough, there it was in the very bottom of the bag he just cleaned out the day before. So, after countless trips up and down ladders, up and down stairs, hours of tight space torch work on a ladder, the one thing we needed to eliminate all of that showed up. Nice. Well, we gave up on trying to fix the existing fitting. We cut the 1 inch line out of the coil and took it to the shop to fab up something similar to install tomorrow. We packed up the tools and headed down to the van.

As we were walking out, Pastor Steve stopped me and asked me to share my story of attempting to loose weight and the struggles I face and the opportunities that have come up as a result of all the prayer and steadfast seeking of the Lord in this journey. I was happy to oblige. We have a guy who is struggling with the weight and self image. I am looking forward to him coming out to the Colony. I have felt like God has been leading me towards working with this guy since he first walked in to our doors. Maybe he and I can work together on this thing. Praying about that.

I didn't go to the gym tonight. No, it was not because of my experience the other night. I was so tired because of my day of "Shoots and Ladders" (I said "shoot" every time something went wrong, and I was on ladders all day, hahahaha

I am going to bed now. Good night...