I've finally made it. Yes, it's been a dream of mine to pilot some kind of "shuttle" vehicle for some time. From the first time I saw one of these in use was at University Baptist Church in Clear Lake. In their particular situation the church was using a nearby parking lot for overflow parking. To “shuttle” people (and shuttle was a VERY appropriate term since the majority of the church members with worked for NASA or it’s many contractors) between locations the church used small buses driven by volunteers. Oh man…was that ever the coolest church job ever. It was a service that was needed, appreciated and air-conditioned. The trifecta. How could I get in on this gig ?
Well of course at the time I was too young to drive. Something to do with the church’s insurance…whatever. I knew I could handle those machines. Once on a mission trip, when I was just a wee-high schooler, my youth minister let me drive the church bus around a parking lot. I even got to open and close the door. Yes I know, you can’t believe it. But it’s true. I was that cool.
So, dreams put on hold for a while, out next churches didn’t have such fancy parking lot services. Mind you it would’ve been a superb service to provide in Naperville in the winter. Not unitil we relocated back to Houston did I encounter the second coming…parking lot shuttles. LOTS of them. Scrambling around the parking lot, weaving in and out of the lanes, grabbing people, smiles galore. It was magnificent. This was where God wanted me. The icing on the cake…they were super long golf carts. The kind that hold 8 people. Super-stretch, Texas-sized ones…if only they had longhorns on the front. They do come equipped with snazzy vinyl zippered coverings for those “blustery” Houston winter mornings. Or to keep out the mo-skeeter, your pick. They were multi-functional.
The first chance I got (at new member class) I put down in my “ministry opportunity” box that I would like to be a parking lot shuttle driver. The ink wasn’t even dry on the paper before I got 2 phone calls and an email. After some length inquisitions about my golf cart skills I was trained on how to shuttle people from the lot to the back-drive of the church. Even some insider’s tricks on the traffic patterns of the lot, who has the right-of-way (it’s always me in case you needed to know) and how to swiflty navigate around the orange cones that separate the “shuttle lanes” from the lay-drivers. Oh and the most blessed part of this ministry…I was told that #4 was the fastest cart of the whole pack. Oh yeah baby…a swift 12 mph through the lot, wind whipping through those old ladies’s finely coiffed hair-dos and those old dudes’s toupee’s…major blessed excitement.
#4 Baby !!
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