What a year..

Here i am a few months later and so much has happened. Since i lost my welding job in April I have experienced so much and felt so dependent on God. Finances have been very tight and everything I do is weighed in a scale of how badly I need it. Being broke sucks but i'm not starving. God continues to provide. In my last post I told you about "The Rocket Shop School of Performance". In January as a way of reaching young men with the Bible I started hosting evening classes once a week to learn about building race cars and study the Bible. In Febuary the students pooled their money and bought a project car. The plan as detailed in my last post was to run 10's for $5000 and do a wheelie. That proved to be a lofty goal but through the guys donations and a few other generous donations we have came a long way. Our car is a 78 Pontiac LeMans. We built a 11 -1 CR 383 chevy with dart SHP heads and a big comp solid cam that should likely put out around 450 hp. We put it in front of a complely built turbo 350 with a 4000 stall one of my 9 inch rearends with a strange center, 4.10 gears and a 35 spline spool. We also installed a 6 point roll bar and built the car to run as fast as 10.0 at 135 mph. Realistically it should run high 11's. We did not put nitrous on it as i realized it is beyond the scope of this learning process at this point. All through building this car we have taken the time to study the Bible and spend time in prayer as a group every single night. We have learned so much an I myself am thankful that God used me to lead this ministry. The ministry has had many ups and downs. I have found myself at all ends of the spectrum emotionally. I'm sure no one who took part learned near as much as I did. Sometimes I felt very let down by God and other times I felt so thankful and amazed by Him. My faith was tested many times and I think I failed lots of those tests. It seems ironic that the year I have no money I end up leading a ministry that required boat loads of it. I had also looked forward to getting the LeMans to the track this year so the guys could get a chance to race it. We were all prepared to go and needed only one more part to finish the car. We needed the center section for the rearend. We had the money to buy it but had very little time. A guy called me with a used one for sale and we saved up the money to buy it for $1400. Then the guy wouldn't return my calls and we ran out of time to buy a new one. I had spoken to the guys about how we should have faith that God brought us this far and he would provide for us as he had every step of the way so far. I felt so let down when the day came and went for us to race. Everyone had worked so hard and given so much of their money towards building this car that I just couldn't believe we missed our chance. God however does not work on my schedule and has a bigger picture in mind. This has all been part of the tough lessons I have been learning. With the car basically done the mechanical phase a decision needs to be made. Paint and body. The car will pass tech and is ready to race but it defintly won't look good doing it! I'm not a body man and my shop is not equipped for body work. I need God's leading as to the next step because he always has our best in mind. If you are reading this and are also involved in some form of automotive ministry I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading
Brian