The Adventures of Buster Rector

 Enjoy the heart warming and humorous stories of America’s favorite Bus Director as he learns ministry lessons that only come from working with kids.

Our latest story is entitled “Buster Rector Fixes a Bus.” Updated June 10, 2008.

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 Buster Rector Fixes a Bus

Buster Rector twisted the wench as hard as he could. The old rusty bolt just would not turn.

“I bet that thing has been on here since Noah drove this old bus off the ark,” Brother B said to himself.

It was late Saturday afternoon and Buster Rector was flat on his back under Bus #3. The muffler on this bus had been acting up for six months now but last Sunday it really started to cause problems. First it would backfire and then it would start to make the same sort of sound Deacon Olan Gray would make when he cleared his throat just before he prayed in church. Finally, just before the engine died, it sounded like someone letting the air out of a balloon. It was time to do something about the problem.

Normally, one of the mechanics at Victory Baptist Church would have taken the old muffler off but this was one of those weeks when it seemed everyone was out of place. Lug Twister was visiting his mother in Big Town, Monk E. Wrench’s back went out again and Spark Plugg was working double shifts all week. Brother B had forgotten all about the needed repair until Donna Devoted, the Bus Captain, asked about her bus in bus meeting that morning.

Buster Rector didn’t mind working on the buses. He wasn’t all that good of a mechanic but he enjoyed getting his hands dirty from time-to-time. But today it was sort of annoying to have to be under a bus. In fact, that was just the kind of thing that had been bothering him all week.

For some reason he had been thinking about the fact that he was still at a small church in a small town. Brother B had thought that with the passing of time, and the attainment of professional advancement, he would “move up in the world of church work,” so to speak. He thought that by now he would have ceased to do tasks like this. By now, he had planned to be in a big church somewhere but that hadn’t happened. He was still doing some of the things he had always done.

He still made the coffee for bus meeting, made his own copies (and even fixed the church copier occasionally), went to SAMS for all the candy, put up the puppet stage every Sunday and did tons of other little tasks that he thought one day he would no longer have to do. He really thought that as long as he had been in the ministry, he would have “moved on to bigger and better things” by now.

It wasn’t that Brother B thought he was above doing such things. He had long ago decided to be a servant of servants. It was just that he had fully expected to be on staff or even pastor at some big, important church by the time he reached this stage of his life. Instead, he was still here, doing the same things he had always done. It had been on his mind all week long and the more he had thought about it, the more it distressed him.

At last, the bolt moved and began to turn.

“Finally, I can get this thing off and I can get finished. I bet Busty Bigwheel over at Bigtown Baptist Church isn’t spending Saturday afternoon working on an old junk bus. I wish I was one of those Bus Ministers at one of those gigantic churches where they had three or four full-time mechanics and all brand new buses.”

The muffler came off fairly easily to be so old.

All of a sudden something black fell out of the end of the muffler and hit Buster Rector right in the face. Black soot covered his face as he tried to get out from under the bus to find the greasy rag he had been using.

After he cleaned his face well enough to see, he looked at what had hit him in the face.
It was a piece of paper of some sort.

“How in this world did this get inside that muffler?” Buster Rector wondered out loud.

It was completely black but he could just barely make out that there were some words on it. Brother B shook as much of the soot off as he could and tried to make out what it said.

“It’s pretty torn up,” He thought as he examined the blackened paper.

“Let’s see. This must be the top . . . to the parents of. This is one of our letters we send home with bus kids who make a decision for Christ. There’s no way this could have gotten in that muffler by itself. This is crazy.”

Buster Rector blew on the top to see if he could make out anything else.

“To the parents of . . . what is that name? To the parents of . . . Trudy? No, Truly - Truly Turnaround! This belonged to Truly Turnaround! It’s got to be five or six years old. This is impossible!”

Brother B’s mind filled with images and memories.

To say Truly Turnaround had been a rebellious teenager would be an understatement. She had started riding the bus when she was fourteen and was nothing but trouble. Truly was from a terrible home and it seemed she hated everything and everybody. Back then Brother B had often wondered why Truly continued to ride the bus. She argued with every adult who asked her to do anything, she mouthed off to anyone who even looked at her, she harassed all the other kids and she rarely ever was where she was supposed to be at any given time on any given Sunday morning. She was one of the worst cases Buster Rector had ever tried to deal with.

Then, after she had been riding the bus for about a year, the church had a special youth Sunday and Truly made a decision for Christ. Brother B was so excited when he heard the news he literally ran to the bus to see Truly. She was beaming as she stood in front of the bus. Brother B talked to her a few minutes and she really did seem to be a different girl. She still had a long way to go and a lot to overcome, but there was definitely a new Truly with them that day.

That day as Brother B and Truly talked, Donna Devoted was walking toward the bus with all her preschoolers in tow.

“Truly, “Donna began, “I’m so happy for you. I know your parents will be too. I put your name on this packet of material. You’ll want to look over it when you get home and there’s a letter for you to give your parents so maybe they will let you be baptized.”

Unexpectedly the old Truly was back.

“I don’t want your packet!” She screamed as she ripped the pack into several pieces and threw them at the front of the bus.

She abruptly ran on the bus leaving Buster Rector and Donna looking bewildered at one another.

It turned out Truly didn’t want her parents to know about her becoming a Christian because she was afraid that they would no longer allow her to attend church.

It took some work, Brother B remembered, but eventually Truly Turnaround was baptized and continued to ride the bus to church. She had grown into a fine Christian young lady and last year, with the help of some of the deacons, started to attend Bible College. Her whole life had been rewritten because of this old bus - the one Buster Rector was working on this Saturday afternoon - and some faithful folks like Donna Devoted.

“But that still doesn’t answer how this got inside that muffler. I mean, it’s infeasible that a piece of paper torn up years ago would somehow make its way into a muffler. There is simply no way this could possibly happen unless . . . unless God put it there.”

As Buster Rector finished putting the new muffler on, he pondered that very thought. And that thought led to other thoughts.

“Maybe God had put the paper in there. Maybe I needed to be reminded that God is still in control. Maybe I am right where I’m supposed to be. Maybe I am doing exactly what God wants me to be doing. Maybe I forgot that it is God that directs my paths and not me. Maybe I’m just a little too big for my britches. Maybe . . .”

“Whoa!” Brother B said out loud. “This is all too impossible. It is just too much to think about!”

But it wouldn’t be the last time Buster Rector thought about the Saturday afternoon he put a new muffler on Bus #3.