A Story That Must Be Told

I have a story to tell. One that I almost did not share, but it is so amazing I simply must share it with my loyal readers (both of you).

You might have seen where we were trying to sell our minivan. (I created a page here on my blog, and shared it on Facebook to get a little exposure for it). You might have also seen my status update or Tweet about us selling it. What you have not heard is the process that happened between those points.

But first, a little background for you. If you have been reading any of my mindless, rambling posts you know that we have two kids that we call our own in Latvia. We hosted them over the winter, and are hopeful they will be able to return for summer hosting (I promise to update you on everything that has been going on soon). In between hosting fees, and adoption fees, we will need quite a significant amount of money to bring our kids home. Therefore we decided that we should sell the van. Brandi and the boys would take over my Suburban, and I would go back to driving the truck. This was a hard decision for me, because we had bought the Suburban for me to use to pull my trailer (my truck only has a V-6 so it is not too fond of pulling the trailer), and as another vehicle that would hold our whole family in case something happened to the van.

The problem is that it was costing us nearly $500 to have the van (payment plus insurance). So while it was hard on me to "give up" the Suburban, from a mature, realistic, rational, point of view it was an easy decision to make. The hard part would be to sell it.

We decided on an asking price of $15k even though it was around $1,100 less than our payoff amount. We were hoping that the van would sell quickly and decided it was worth it to have to pay some money just to make the payment go away. Besides, if it did not sell quickly I had resolved myself to spending up to $5k  for us to take it to CarMax to sell it there. (Hello tax return!)

So, we shared it on Facebook. And our friends shared it from there. Wow. A whole bunch of friends shared it. From Missouri to Florida and all around Georgia we had people sharing the link to their friends. It was staggering to see everyone who had shared it. Brandi and I were amazed and extremely grateful for all of our friends who shared it for us. What is even more amazing is that there were people who were not friends with us who shared it. That's when the story starts to get really good...

One of our good friends had shared the link on her Facebook wall/page/timeline/thingamajig (whatever they are calling it this week). One of her friends saw it and posted it to her own wall/page/timeline... (you get the point). Her father in law happened to see it on there and began to pray about the van. He contacted me on a Monday night and told me that he wanted the van. He only needed to get with his credit union to work out the loan arrangements.

You read that right. In our first email conversation he told me that he wanted to buy the van. Brandi and I were beside ourself with disbelief. This was too good to be true it seemed. We had only had the van "listed" for four days. And it was only on Facebook! But the story gets even better...

When we went on Thursday of that week (which happened to be my birthday) to meet the buyer he had a check for us not in the amount of $15,000, but for the entire payoff amount. He proceeded to tell me that all week he had been wrestling with God about the van. Not about whether or not he should buy the van, but the amount that he should pay. While he wanted to give us our asking price (which would have been completely fair) God was asking for him to give us the payoff price. The buyer (a super nice guy named Dan), told me that he felt like Jonah. He knew that God was telling him to do something and he would either have to do it first, or go through a little "troubles" (hopefully not a voyage in a fish) before he was obedient to God. Dan felt like God was telling him to give us what we needed, and not just what we were asking. And he was obedient to that. And he blessed our socks off for it.

We were so worried that we would have to spend thousands of dollars to get rid of the van, and yet God worked it out in such a way that we did not have to spend one penny. It was the greatest answer to prayer that we could have asked for. It was amazing, exciting, unbelievable, overwhelming...the list could go on and on.

The story reminds me of a verse in Romans 8:

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good"...

Now you see why this is a story that must be told. It is simply to amazing not to share how God worked in this situation to bring about the good we needed so that we would be better  prepared to bring home these two orphans, and so that we are in a more secure financial position.

Living for His Glory,

Kris