Urgent Prayer Request!

Rachel Sutton, one of the missionaries that my family ministry has sent to Uganda, Africa is ill with a very serious case of Malaria.

Recently, after having lived in Uganda for three months now, Rachel and Andrew Sutton both fell sick with Malaria. It was what is known as type 1 Malaria and can be eradicated, unlike type 2, which is a virus that attaches itself to your blood. Thank God that it was the lesser of the two evils. But, after Rachel had assumedly gotten rid of the Malaria, it suddenly flared up again a few days ago and she was taken to the hospital. They ran some tests and discovered that she not only had Malaria, but also Typhoid. She has been miserable for the last week, and to make matters worse, it is Summer in Uganda currently and the heat is intense. It is not at all a pleasant situation, and the hospital care in a developing country is nowhere near that of our hospitals in the US.

On behalf of The Allen Family and Hope Missions International, I ask you to be in prayer for Rachel and the entire Sutton family. Being sick and having a wife who is sick has caused Andrew to have to halt progress on Hope Children’s Village and Rachel cannot teach currently. This isn’t exactly the life a missionary dreams of, and we are definitely seeing a difficult side of Uganda and mission work. However, in anything we do for the Lord we will face opposition, and the greater the work, the greater the opposition will be. This is simply an inconvenience to the Suttons and an impedance to the work in Uganda that serves as confirmation of our callings rather than discouragement.

And, I don’t mean to downplay the seriousness of the situation. Malaria and Typhoid are dangerous and prevalent this time of year in Africa, they can cause lasting problems if not cared for and treated properly and quickly. Rachel’s case has been largely undetected for a while and is very strong. We pray against any lasting effects of this illness from befalling her and that God would use this as a tool to bring others to Him. We pray that His power would be magnified in Rachel’s life and that He would remove this from her. We also pray that God would protect the Sutton girls and the Hope children from falling sick.

None of this scares me in the least about taking the trip to Uganda this July. If anything, it encourages me. What great things God must be doing if the devil is trying this hard to prevent them! I can’t wait to be a part of His work there. I know that He’ll protect me if I’m in His will. I will follow, I will follow; where He leads me I will follow. I will fear no death, or darkling shadows; only trusting, I will follow.

As always, thanks for reading.

–the anonymous novelist

Building A Bus

Because my older brother Josh is doing a YouTube series which is also called “How to Build a Bus”, I decided to change the name of my own saga to “Building a Bus”. The video above was the easiest way to get everything into one place, and include the short video clips you saw. All of that is a taste of what’s been going on. I haven’t had my phone around to catch everything we’re doing on video or in pictures, but there has been a lot more going on than what you see.

Some of the things you haven’t seen are what’s been done under and over the bus. On the top, myself and Josh laid down strips of seal tape for insulation along the entire outer edge to guard against leaks. Beneath the bus we built a wooden housing case for the massive tanks that will go under it. The front two cabinets have been cleaned out and in the first one is all of our sound equipment and product, (it was a tight fit, but thankfully I’m good at puzzles). The second cabinet holds the majority of our worldly possessions. 

We returned the trailer that we had borrowed to haul all of our stuff around while we were in between buses, so the stuff had to go somewhere. We thought about setting it inside the bus, but having to move it out every time we wanted to work was not a pleasant thought. Even though we returned the trailer, we are still traveling in The Flash, our Ford Expedition, and the bus tags along behind.

It’s a lot of work, and we keep running into little road blocks, but it’s coming along and hopefully will be done sooner than we think. 

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
–Romans 8:28

As always, thanks for reading, and watching.

—the anonymous novelist

For The Facebook Uninformed

   This is summary of everything I’ve posted thus far about the accident with the bus, living without the bus, and the situation with obtaining a new bus. Yes, it will be targeted primarily toward those reading from my family’s Facebook following who have yet to discover my blog. So, if you see several links to other posts and information that you’ve seen, it’s all part of the plan. Hey, even if you’ve already read most of this information, there will be some that you have not, and very recent updates as well. Here goes.Alright, so, in November of last year, the bus got into a slight wreck, a fender-bender really. We were on a two lane, rural road and the guy in the truck in front of us was lost. He saw a turn late, and stopped abruptly to pull over and find out where he was. Well, he stopped too quickly and oncoming traffic didn’t allow him to turn as quickly. Dad knew the bus couldn’t stop in time, and pulled into the left lane to avoid a collision, because to pull right would land us in a ditch. Well, the fellow was turning left and we caught the left corner of his truck with the front, right corner of our bus doing about 15 mph.

Long story short, we limped to the next concert and made do until a driver from a shop in Wisconsin could fly down to where we were to pick the bus up. Now, the costs of repairs were insanely high due to the fact that the parts for the bus are no longer manufactured. 60,000+ dollars wasn’t worth it to us or the insurance company, so they totaled it.

We are officially homeless. For months now we have been living out of hotels and friends houses, just getting by and making it from one concert to the next. Now, down to the news part: what are we going to do? Well, we have a bus in Virginia that we are attempting to purchase, but things keep happening to halt that process.

We have been having trouble with insurance companies and whatnot, but the short of it is that we do not have the bus yet, but are attempting to get it. The bus we are looking to get is a shell and ready to convert into a home, however, there is literally nothing inside of this shell. We will basically be building a house to go inside of our bus, building it as we travel. This isn’t the first time this has happened, but it isn’t where any of us saw our family being on our 20th ministry anniversary year.

It’s going to be crazy, but extremely fun. I’ll be keeping you updated as we go along, and you can read all about everything that has been happening in further detail in my posts: “The Bus Wreck Story“, “Homeless For The Holidays“, and “Life Happens“.

As always, thanks for reading.

—the anonymous novelist

Hope For Tomorrow

For the past several days I have been hard at work uploading my family’s newest CD to digital download platforms. I am excited to tell you all that it is now available!

This project was fun to record, the entire family got together to make it happen. Who knows how many more times that will happen. It is rare nowadays that Caleb and his family, and Gabrielle and Robin are with us at the same time. God gave us 16 years together before Caleb left, and another 3 years before Gabrielle left. I don’t know what plans God has for the rest of us, but I do know that this ministry has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

Some of you may know this, but I have been travelling and singing with my family since I was 4 months old. I’ve never know anything else. This ministry has been my life, I have grown up with it and therefore have a love for it and a desire to see it continue. I’m grateful for the blessings God has bestowed upon us thus far, but just because we are doing what God want us to do, doesn’t mean we are exempt from problems. In fact, I’m inclined to think that living in a metal rectangle magnetically attracts problems of all kinds.

Point in case: we got back from Uganda in the middle of last month and took a few days to cool down and recollect our senses; after which we were scheduled to sing about 6 hours away from where we were parked. Half way to our destination, something snapped, Dad found a mechanic garage that would check it out to see what had happened and how bad it was. Long story short… well, shorter, a stabilizer rod had broken on one of the back tires and could have resulted in the bus tumbling end over end off of the highway. Needless to say, we weren’t going anywhere any time soon.

Without a bus, and a concert to get to, we checked around for a rental car that would get us there, but no one, literally no one had anything. Turned out, another group that was on their way to the same event had stopped to get their air conditioning units fixed and were able to swing by and give us a lift to the event. Living in hotels for the next several days til we eventual got the bus back after about a week was an interesting, but not uncommon feeling. Things like this just happen, and that’s what keeps life interesting, exciting.

Check us out on iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, Xbox Music, Amazon MP3, Google Music Store, Shazam, our website, and several other platforms as well. Let us know what you think of the new album.

As always, thanks for reading.

–the anonymous novelist