Friday, August 25, 2006

Out of sync.....

I mentioned that we were having problems with our header. Here's how I understand it. There are two drives pushing knives - one drive on the left and the other on the right side of the header. It's hard to get two drives synchonized but when they are, the whole thing is smooth. The engineers thought it was better to design it to fluctuate in and out of sync (rather than be always out of sync). So one drive was designed to be a little faster than the other.

Well by 700 acres, it was out of sync far more often than in sync and it was starting to break down because of the intense vibration being out of sync causes. Meanwhile the company has been working on an electrical control to automatically adjust and keep the drives in sync. That's what I went for on my road trip.

All day Wednesday, Ladger worked at getting that set up on the header and it wasn't working. And by noon yesterday and many phone calls back and forth, Ladger was as discouraged as I've ever seen him. So we started to plan to invest in another header to do the job and start the process of requesting our money back for a header that has never worked the way we need it to. (Although, when it does work, it can do a terrific job). And I prayed.

Finally, Ladger just went to the field and started combining with a header that was in danger of breaking apart. But it worked. This morning there is hope again.

As I was praying about it, it occurred to me how much that is just like our lives. So many times we have so many things driving us and it can put our lives out of sync. The ride is a bumpy one and things start falling apart. And it's then we need to get back in sync with our main drive....and that's the one way that Jesus talks about. After all He is our Chief Engineer.

2 comments:

HeyJules said...

What a great post! Gotta love it when things just work out, don't you?

Good stuff, A.

Andrea said...

Thanks heyjules! I just got back from the field and things continue to work well. It's a real blessing as harvest becomes almost 'fun' again.