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Monday, July 1

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Yesterday we went to West Nottingham Cemetery, Colora, Maryland, to say goodbye to our friend Betty Boyle.

The entire service was held at her burial site.

We appreciated spending a bit of time with her children, Kathy and Ken and a few grandchildren. It was especially meaningful to listen to a family friend sing, “I Come to the Garden Alone.”

We enjoyed meeting a few of our mutual friends and enjoyed listening to several people share good and funny memories of Betty and her husband Wendell. Wendell passed away in 2014.

This is a photo I took of Betty and Wendell many years ago at a TFC retreat at Camp Hebron. Wendell was instrumental in bringing the ministry of Transport for Christ to the Northeast Region of the United States.

It was probably in the late ’60s when he followed a vehicle that had Transport For Christ initialed on it until it stopped at the TFC headquarters. At the time he was a truck driver who delivered mushrooms to the Toronto area of Ontario, Canada, where TFC was birthed.

This is when he learned about the ministry and that there was a magazine called The Highway Evangelist (now Highway News and Good News). He eventually purchased many magazines each month and placed them in our local truck stops – thus the fire was lit to begin the Lancaster Chapter, which is how Cerwin and I learned about Transport for Christ.

Through that we became good friends. Cerwin and Wendell even hosted a trucker’s gospel radio program on a local station for several years.

Yesterday brought back many memories, especially as friends shared stories which involved his trucking and their involvement with TFC.

One of the most interesting happened during Wendell’s trucking days. He was leading a group of 4 or 5 other truckers, and all were going over the speed limit when a few policemen stopped them. Each trucker said they were doing the speed limit of 55. When they got to Wendell, he told the policeman he was doing 80, his policemen called the others to say, “Hey, I got an honest truck driver here.” The result. They left Wendell go and gave the others a speeding ticket. 🙂

After learning about Betty’s funeral, Cerwin suggested that we get lunch at a new restaurant on the way home. Since the restaurant is close to Roy and Deb (our daughter), we told them our plans. They decided to join us – along with Roy’s mom Barb.

Our next stop was the Lancaster General Hospital to visit Cerwin’s brother who was in an accident over the weekend. He was on his motorcycle (trike) when someone drove into him. Thankfully each were only going 10 mph, after having been stopped. Policemen were on the scene from a previous accident and saw it happen, so there is no question that it was the other person’s fault.

Elvin has a very bruised hip and femur. We expect he will be going home when they have the pain under control.