The Brandon Story

The Brandon Story

"It was an aristotelian confluence of events." Sam Seaborn said that in an episode of The West Wing, one of my favorite shows of all time. I over-quote it but for the Brandon Story, it works.

The Brandon Story happened over two years ago but it's impact on us--both personally and spiritually--keeps growing.

One of our goals in ministry is to be interruptible. That may sound like it's so obvious that it shouldn't need to be said but with the kids, the dogs, and all the life, it most certainly does need to be said. We pray and try to stay aware and interruptible but travel days (especially in that first year on the road) make us very forgetful. There's so much to do.

Like most traveling couples, I (Davaughn) take care of the inside of the rig on travel days. That means I move hanging baskets, take things off shelves, secure homeschool material, and generally get things inside ready to move. John is responsible for all things outside.

On this particular Monday in December, I paused sweeping because I hadn't heard John outside in a while. I poked my head outside to see him talking to a guy about his age that we didn't know. Did he forget it was travel day? We had to be out of our site in an hour or I didn't know what was going to happen.

Stranger than him chatting it up with this guy on a travel day was the laidback way he was doing it. Like everything was finished and we were ready to roll. Everything was not finished. We were not ready to roll. I went about my business.

Fifteen minutes later, neither of the guys had moved a muscle. These forty year old men might as well have been on rocking chairs on a large covered porch. We had 45 minutes before we needed to be pulling out of there and I had feelings.

I breathed and headed out to meet this guy and see if maybe John needed help exiting the conversation. (If you're married to an enneagram 9, you know...it can be a thing). He did not. He was there for all of it and for no other reason than the The Spirit giving me complete peace at that moment, so was I. Just like that, check-out times and drive-day schedules didn't matter.

Shortly after joining the conversation, I mentioned The Lord and Brian's eyes got huge with excitement. "You're Christians? We're Christians!" We nodded and told him a little bit about the call that the Lord had put on our hearts.

He was beyond excited. He told us how they'd been in the states from Canada for four months and hadn't met any believers in campgrounds yet. John and I looked at eachother a little surprised because that had not been our experience at all.

"In fact," I said, "we made friends with that family a few spots down from you. They're an amazing family with a strong faith in the Lord. I know they'd love to meet you guys. And you're both going to be here for about the same ammount of time."

We asked our (then new) friends to come over and meet Brandon. Their ease and their warmth came with them and we all continued to talk. Check out time had come and gone for at least an hour by the time John said we should probably start packing up. But first we prayed together. There in our site, pouring into the campground road, the five of us put our hands on each other's shoulders and prayed. Over one another, over our families, over our travels, we took turns thanking and asking the Lord to do what only He can do.

It wasn't brief...probably another half an hour. But at the end of it, the sweetness and lightness I've grown accostomed to experiencing after praying in a group was interrupted by tears. What? No! Why? Using his shirt to wipe his eyes, Brandon explained that he hadn't prayed in a group like that since they left Canada. We all looked at each other understandingly and a few of us teared up ourselves.

We separated and sprang into action. The guys helped John get the rest of the outside stuff done and I drove a mile away to fill up the truck. Almost immediately, the "check brake system" message came on. Cool.

I filled up and returned. The guys went to work figuring out what was going on with our brake system. The brake fluid was low...right beneath the low line. We didn't have brake fluid. Our friends didn't have brake fluid. Brandon did though. "It's not much," he said. But it was the perfect amount to get us where we needed to go. To this day, we've never had a brake fluid issue again.

Believe it or not, there's more to the Brandon story but I've already stretched your attention spans long enough. If you made it this far, please thank the Lord with us for using His people as only He can to uplift and provide for His bride. He cares so well for us!