We got a van! The story is an interesting one so I thought I'd share how God answered our prayers. :)
Before yesterday, I drove a Ford Escape. I love it and it's the perfect size for our family of 4. However, we won't be a family of 4 forever! We needed an upgrade but we knew we wanted to keep our Escape for Marcus. He drove a 2002 Grand Am and it was a miracle that it lasted as long as it did... which it barely scraped by. We had been praying for a new car for him for over a year. It was a tough car for winter because it had no heat (and no A/C in the summer!) plus the driver's side window didn't work, and it needed new tires, plus a long list of other mechanical issues. We were praying we didn't need to put any more money into it before we got rid of it.
So, we decided to start looking into vans before winter came because we didn't think Marcus' Grand Am would even make it through the first snow fall. Amazingly, we quickly found the perfect minivan at a dealership about an hour away! It was exactly what we wanted and a good price. They had recently lowered the price, so when we called about it, the sales rep we talked to said to come in sooner rather than later. I asked my parents to watch our small humans last night (Thursday) while we went to check it out. We planned on trading the Grand Am in for the minivan, so we needed to drive the Grand Am an hour away to get us to the dealership. I drove the Escape (with the kids' carseats in it) to my parents' house and Marcus followed me with the Grand Am. We dropped the kids off at my mom's at 5:15 and were on our way, leaving the Escape at my parents' and driving the Grand Am to Waukesha.
About 4 minutes into our drive, Marcus said that ever since he added more coolant a few months ago (when his car overheated about 25 minutes away at 7:30 am on a Thursday morning and I had to bring him coolant and then jump his car... that was fun) his car had been acting fine, but all of the sudden, as we were driving and had just left my parents' house, the temperature gauge (I have no idea what the correct terminology is here) was going up higher and higher. And then the car started clunking and making weird sounds. And Marcus said we had to pull over right away. So we got off the highway and pulled over at a restaurant. It was only 5:20 but it was basically pitch black out already. He popped the hood and saw smoke and fluid leaking... never good signs. He had no idea why this was happening because he literally *just* added more coolant before we headed to the dealership (so like, half an hour ago) but it was overheating like it did a few months ago. Not cool! We were getting ready to trade this bad boy in, we couldn't have it die on us! If we couldn't get it to the dealership an hour away, we couldn't trade it in for a van. So what did we do?
We prayed, obviously. I was praying silently the whole time that Marcus was trying to figure out what was going on with the car and then we prayed together before shutting the hood and hopping back in the car. We started it and it was still making funny sounds, so we planned on driving back to my parents' house to get the Escape and drive that to the dealership to look at the van. We were disappointed because if we ended up wanting to buy the van, we'd have nothing to trade for it because we needed to keep our Escape as Marcus' car and his Grand Am wasn't about to get us all the way to the dealership.
As we headed back to my parents' house, the car stopped making weird noises, so just a moment before we turned left to head back to my parents', we went right and decided to try heading to the dealership again. We drove for a couple minutes on the highway and were approaching the restaurant we pulled into the first time (half an hour ago by this point) and the car was staying in the normal temperature range. I kept praying and praying the whole ride there... and by God's grace, we made it all the way to the dealership with no issues!
I knew that Satan didn't want us to get a van, because that meant one more step towards adopting two children. I always like to do the opposite of what Satan wants. Satan didn't want us to get a van, which means I really wanted a van! Satan hates adoption and he wants orphans to stay orphans. He hates when families are pieced together. Right when things are going well (like we found a van that would fit all 6 of us and it seemed like the perfect fit for us!) is when Satan wants to step in and destroy that plan. He wants to fill you with doubt and put up roadblocks to stop you from getting where you're going. I'm so glad that God is more powerful than the devil and that we made it to the dealership in one piece. We could have let the doubt sink in and given up. We could have just dropped the whole plan of getting a van because we didn't think we could make it there. We could have been grouchy and negative and disappointed instead of trusting God to fulfill His plan. But, we were obedient in praying for God's favor and protection and like always, He proved His faithfulness.
When we got there, we asked for Mark, who is the guy that Marcus talked to on the phone about the van the day prior. He showed us the van and let us test drive it. As he was making casual conversation, he asked us why we needed a van. We told him we had two kids and were in the process of adopting two more kids. He looked at us and said, "do you guys go to church in Janesville?" and we said "yeah, we go to New Life Assembly of God." He replied with, "as soon as you said you were adopting, I knew you had to be Christians! I go to Waukesha First Assembly of God!" Marcus and I exchanged looks with our jaws dropped and said, "you mean Pastor Todd's church? He was the associate pastor at our church until he left to go to Waukesha to be the senior pastor 4 years ago! Small world!" We all talked about how awesome Pastor Todd & Michelle were and Mark told us a little bit of his testimony as we test drove the van. We talked about the new youth pastor at Waukesha First, Tyler, (who also used to go to New Life in Janesville) and how Mark related to his story. We talked about the goodness of God, the heart of Jesus, and how awesome it is to be able to serve. I still can't believe that when Marcus happened to call the dealership on a random Wednesday, that the guy who picked up the phone and ended up selling us our van happened to go to the church that our former associate pastor (and current senior pastor's son-in-law) now is the senior pastor of! Small world!
We test drove the van, talked numbers, got a trade in value for the Grand Am (which wasn't much because like I said, it was falling apart, but it was better than nothing!) and worked everything out. After 3 hours at the dealership and 2 hours of travel, we got to pick up our kids from my parents' house with our new minivan. We're so thrilled, and I feel like an official mom now that I have a "soccer mom van"! ;)
The stow-and-go seating in the van is great because I am selling a bunch of stuff at a huge church garage sale tomorrow, so I can put the back seats down to fit several bins of baby clothes in the back of the van to haul over to the church tomorrow. Perfect timing! Pray that I sell a lot, because all the money goes towards our adoption fund!
These pictures don't do justice to the amazing Tetris skills of my husband... I have no idea how he fit everything into the van!
Oh and speaking of adoption fund, did I mention we're over 55% FUNDED?! Praise God!
There's still time to buy t-shirts
here.
So, that's our little story of how we got our minivan. Once again, Satan tried to step in and destroy our plan and crush our spirits, but God is greater! Just one more thing to prove that this adoption is exactly where God wants us.
Vehicle for 4 children: check!
