We got to Orlando, went to interviews for student aid and found that we qualified. They paid for our schooling. It was a six week course, and then there was some help with job placement. Chris was a pro, and passed most everything. He had a little problem with the paper work, but I aced that. We were going to compliment each other in the truck just fine.

We had chosen a few companies to go to work for, but settled on one out of Chattanooga TN. Covenant advertised as being a Christian Based company that took on graduate drivers. They accepted us and we headed to Tennessee, via a bus.

We got in on a Sunday and went to hotel. We thought we would have the rest of the day to rest but as soon as we got our room, we were shepherded down to the conference room to start filling out paperwork. They wanted to know everything about our lives, and I figured they had to be careful, so I answered the questions HONESTLY. Chris always said answer the question honestly, but do not elaborate. So the question was had you ever been convicted of a crime. Well, yes I had. Then it was please explain. So I said exactly what I was charged with. It had been 5 years, I was clean and I knew I was not going back to it anytime soon, if ever.

For the next 3 days we attended conferences from the time we got up to the time we turned in to bed. It was exhausting. We filled out enough paperwork to fill up a landfill. We were told from the beginning we would be separated, Chris would go with one trainer, I would go with another and training was 6 weeks. We did not know who our trainers would be, or where we would be going. It was going to be hard, but we would get through.

On Wednesday they gave us our compesation (comp) cards which was the way we got our advances and fueled the truck. They had said if we had any problems activating them to go to the office upstairs. I activated Chris' and he headed over to check in with the bus he was leaving on. I called to activate mine, and it could not be activated. I went to Chris told him I had to go upstairs to find out what was wrong. He was busy with the team leader.

I went into the office, told the woman who I was and she asked me to sit down. This is never good. She told me that I had been Disqualified on Monday due to my 'drug' charge. ON MONDAY!

I told her I thought this was a Christian organization. God forgave me of my transgression and led me back to the right path, but you HUMANS can't forgive. (this was not the first time I had faced this very problem. ) Men think forgiveness only comes after some sort of punishment. God doesn't think that way.

By this time Chris is really getting concerned. They were really trying to get him on that bus. He told the leader that he had to find his wife and the guy told him to get on the bus, he walked away and headed toward the building. At the door another guy told him to go back to his bus, and when he said he was looking for his wife, the guy said he needed to go back to the bus,. Chris said he told them he was not leaving until he knew what was going on with his wife, and he headed upstairs.

He had not even made it to the door before he heard my very emotional voice screaming about God forgave me, but you can't. He knew there was a problem. He came in and the lady told him he needed to get on the bus, and he told her he wasn't leaving until he knew what was going on. She told him he had been accepted and he needed to get on the bus, He said not without his wife and we left the office.

The small consolation was that they gave us tickets for the bus ride home. We had to get a cab back to the bus station. The thought of another 2 days on a bus was not something to look forward to, so we sat down to catch our breath. We barely had enough cash to go get something to eat, and no way to get there anyway. AND AS ALWAYS, GOD was there.

A lady was coming out of the building. We had seen her in conferences but had not spoken to her. There were hundreds of people in this group. She saw me crying and Chris was madder than mad.

She came and asked if everything was okay and I sobbed out what had happened. She said she had been disqualified as well. Her drug test had come back 'cloudy' so they could not be sure she wasn't doing drugs. She said she had been on a cleanse shake type diet for a week, and that is what caused the cloudy test, but they didn't want to hear that. What was wrong with these people?

Her name was Virginia. She lived in Atlanta and had driven up, so she had her car. She suggested we go get something to eat, because it was getting late, and just take our mind off the immediate problem to get some perspective. Of course we told her that we didn't have a lot of money, and no real ideas about what we were gonna do, so she said no problem, lunch was on her, but we could always cash in the bus tickets. She took us to the bus station, we cashed in the tickets and had a bit of cash in our pockets.

She took us to an all you could eat pizza place, the food was soooo good. We sat and chatted for a long time, I would guess a couple of hours. She told us that we were not going to solve anything in the restaurant, so why don't we come back to Atlanta with her, spend the night and see what we could come up with. I remember asking her why she would do that? She didn't know us, and she had just found out that I had a 'past drug' issue. How did she know we were not just there scamming her. She told me that something told her we needed her help. I still tear up over it.

Her apartment was very inviting. We had some dinner, sat and talked into the night. She called the bus station to find out when the next bus was out to Florida, and it turned out to be the next day. We got up, had some breakfast, then she drove us to the bus station. She had already prepaid for the tickets herself, so we would not be going home broke. We hugged and thanked her one more time, and said good-bye We would see her a few years later.

Unsure of where to go from here, we got home, called the school to see what other companies might be available, They told us about a local company. They were not really sure how good they were, they had been bought out by a larger company and they didn't have much of a good score as far as drivers went. We figured we needed a job, and if they needed drivers, what cold it hurt. Thus we were Goin' Truckin'