My name is Lynn Hileman; and in 1973, in Hudson, New Hampshire, a bus worker knocked on our door. I was thirteen years old at the time. My brothers and sister started riding the bus to Tabernacle Baptist Church in nearby Litchfield. My mother soon started attending but drove to church instead. My father, whose mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, was slow to come with us—until, that is, the bus broke down in front of our house three Sundays in a row! My father had always loved to tinker with old vehicles, and there was one in the front yard! He, like my mother, my brothers, and sister before, started attending and, too, got saved. My dad was the bus mechanic until weeks before he went Home to be with the Lord in 2001. He was also a deacon for most of those years.
I, on the other hand, was a rebellious teenager; but on May 5, 1975, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and, from that day, have not looked back. Within a week of getting saved and baptized, my mother and I took over a bus; and I am still a bus captain! I can’t even imagine a higher calling.
In 1978, I met my soon-to-be husband on the front steps of our church; he, too, was a bus captain. We served at Tabernacle, running the bus ministry until 1993 when God called us to start the Heritage Baptist Church in Nashua, reaching bus families. Our children all serve in the bus ministry, and two are bus captains. I know the responsibility that they have had through this ministry have kept them serving Christ.
There is not a week that goes by that my husband and I don’t have someone come to us to tell us that they rode our buses as children. Four of our Sunday school teachers were bus kids.
A few Sundays ago, a young woman and her husband came to church. She immediately hugged me and, with tears in her eyes, asked to see “Bro. Larry” (my husband) and our oldest daughter. I did not know that we had picked her up as a young child on the bus. She and her husband got saved and baptized not long after. The bus ministry can be difficult, but the blessings will last more than a lifetime—through eternity!