Off to Canada . . . with a little delay

Praise the Lord for his Goodness and His wonderful works to the children of men!

We left Kansas to head to Colorado on Tuesday, June 20. When we arrived in Pana, IL JA took the van in to be serviced and have an oil change. The result = The mechanic informed us that the transmission on our van was shot. My dad (thank you dad!) immediately began searching the internet to find a cheap van we could buy somewhere in the state of IL (The cost to replace the transmission would cost more than we spent on the purchase of the van . . . not to mention all of the other things that the mechanic told us where wrong with the van).

Thursday morning we drove up to the subarbs of Chicago and the van died about two miles from where we planned to purchase a new vehicle. We called the dealership right away and they said the would have someone to pick us up in half an hour. An hour later with our cell phone nearly dead (we had neglected to charge it the night before), we were still sitting on the side of the road. Believe me, Kara and Lydia although not happy about the situation were actually fairing pretty well. They finally picked us up, and drove us the five minutes to the dealership. As soon as we arrived, I began to get nervous about the whole situation (the dealership was not in the best location, and all I could think was Please Lord Don't let this be a Chop Shop! The last thing we needed on our trip to Canada was to end up buying a stolen vehicle. Well, we spent about six hours at the dealer trying to buy the specific van we had predetermined to buy. At the end of six hours and problem after problem interfering with the sale we called Josh and Bekah (who were about twenty minutes away) and asked them to come get us. We told the dealer we would spend the night praying about the van that night and call him tomorrow morning to finalize it.

Thank you Josh and Bekah for coming to our Rescue! After we loaded all of our stuff into their van, we sold our current van to the dealer for the cost of the towing). Then later that evening, Josh's dad got us in touch with a dealer who was a Christian and we purchased a better van for less than the cost of the van we were looking at. Praise the Lord for his provision! We were able to purchase the van Thursday night, and Fridaywe drove up to Kenosha, Wisconsin registered the van and got liscence plates and then continued on our way to Canada making it all the way to Ohio on Friday.