Ride On

Originally, we had plans to look for a larger vehicle towards the end of the year - in good time for Baby's arrival in January '09 and a time at which we expect a few $$ to cover the expense.

Well, God very definitely led us to "shop" sooner. At a family gathering, Ken's brother suggested shopping for a vehicle in the US through "Craigslist". Out of curiousity, we checked it out. That was mid-August.

Immediately, we located a Suburban that was a nine passenger (a front bench seat instead of buckets - rare to say the least!). As it turned out, that "Burb" waited for us another two weeks - almost 4 weeks from the original posting.

The seller contacted us again with a lower price at the beginning of September - just after we had "discovered" that our van registration was to expire on September 14th. We had forgotten about that and now, we realized why God had led us to begin our shopping earlier than we had originally planned.



The whole purchase scenario seemed like a great fit - it turned out that the sellers are a fellow Christian homeschooling who needed to upsize to fit their family. (With 8 children 13 years and under they had just purchased a 12 passenger van so they wouldn't need to take two vehicles everywhere they went.) We enjoyed sweet fellowship with these folks the evening we went to purchase their Suburban.

...And that's why we were in Grand Forks, North Dakota when we got the call telling us that my sister had gone to glory!

In retrospect, now that we have the Suburban, we realize that it is not a "new" vehicle and there have certainly been challenges along the way:

- the windshield, which was replaced the day we bought it, LEAKS - err, but fixable.
- for a time, shortly after the purchase we thought we may not be able to register it in Canada due to some recall regulations, but God worked that out and all the paperwork is done.
- then last week, after a complete Manitoba safety check and about 300 km, while driving it, we nearly lost the front driver side wheel - the lug nuts were ALL loose, the tire crooked and almost off. The rest of the lug nuts were all only finger tight etc.and in a variety of sizes - who would have thought to check that?- BUT, God preserved us from this attack of the devil - alerting Ken to the problem and causing him to investigate BEFORE an accident occured. After tightening all the lug nuts, we limped home - and called the mechanic! A mere $55 put new lug nuts all around that fit properly and stay tight!

Having safetied the "Burb" we expect it will fill the need of the larger vehicle. Because it has a truck chassy it certainly has a greater capacity for the larger load of a growing family. Our Venture van was always hanging low with the full load of 4 adults and 4 children plus our gear though it has always served us well. Our last trip home from SK though - loaded and with the topper filled as well, it still did 30 miles to the gallon for gas mileage, pretty good/not bad!

To God be the Glory - through this provision!