I prayed for a mini-van . . . and since my favorite color is green, I made a special request for a green one! (it never hurts to ask!). About a week later, someone called to tell me that her friend was wanting to donate their mini-van to someone in ministry . . . oh, and it just so happened to be green!
Isn't God fun?!
A few days later, two really excited kids climbed around the inside of our "new" van! It was nine years old, but it was new to us and still had lots of life left in it.
I don't remember how many miles were on the odometer when that wonderful family gave us their hand-me-down van, but we personally put LOTS more on it. We took it on several cross country trips, into Canada twice and around town more than anyone wants to think about! It has served us very, very well over the past 8 1/2 years. About 3 weeks ago we found out that the transmission has finally gone "kaput" (and on a 17 year old car with close to 200K miles, was probably not worth it for us to replace it)
I poked around on Craigslist and found two vans that looked interesting and affordable (though neither one was green!) One of them happened to be for sale in the same mountain town where we had plans to spend Thanksgiving. Long story short, we drove to the mountains in one car and came home in two! That particular van turned out to be very clean, very well kept, seven years newer than our last one and in great shape . . . and cost us less than replacing the transmission would have!
The Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization came today to haul our "old green van" away. There has been some sadness, especially for Daniel, about "saying goodbye" to the van that has been in our family for his entire life (he still doesn't really understand why we can't "just keep it in our back yard"!) Nevertheless, we are thankful that God has, once again, provided for our needs.
