Our son Andrew came to the 40 Days for Life vigil site to show us the van he bought for us

About a week ago, I received a phone call from our son Andrew.  He got right to the point, saying “I bought you a van.”  On Friday, Andrew and his wife Shantel made the long drive down from Chico to deliver our new van.

We have known for years that Andrew had an amazing ability to find great deals on eBay, but this one surpasses our wildest imaginations! After spending so many years in our home, experiencing both the frustrations and the benefits of a large family, Andrew knew exactly what we needed, and this van has features that we wouldn’t have even thought of asking for.

Our old van (which has logged almost 280,000 miles) was beginning to show its age, and we had been finding it necessary to restrict our travel. 

Several years ago, our old van had been experiencing some transmission problems, and we took it in to a shop where we were told that the van needed a new transmission, which would cost $4500.  We didn’t have money to pay for this, so we shared this situation with our supporters.  As a result, some of our supporters sent special donations to help us purchase a new van.

In the meantime, we decided to take the van down the street to Mike Reed’s old Aamco transmission shop.  Mike serviced the transmission, and our problems were gone.  We don’t know whether the people at the first shop (owned by Christians) had given us a faulty diagnosis of the problem, or whether God worked a miracle, but we do know that the transmission has run great ever since that day.

We still had the money in our “new van fund” set aside, but finding a new van was no longer a priority.  So we kept driving the old van, even when the air conditioner stopped working.  Even when the heater stopped working.  Repairing the air conditioner and heater would have cost too much, so even when we had to drive home in freezing temperatures, we would just try to bundle up.  In the blazing heat of the summer, it was very uncomfortable, even with the windows rolled down.

Andrew not only found a great van, but he also asked some members of our extended family to help.  So now we will just need to come up with a couple thousand more dollars between now and August, which is just a fraction of what we thought we would need to raise to purchase a new van.

Then, to top everything off, he spent his Saturday cleaning up our old van (not an easy task!), even though we were too busy to help him much.  And he even stayed an extra day to join us at the prayer vigil for the closing celebration of 40 Days for Life, experiencing the incredible presence of the Lord until after 1 in the morning.

We have taught for years that children are a gift from God, and encouraged women facing crisis pregnancies to realize that someday the difficulties they were experiencing with the child in their womb would be distant memories, and that child would grow up to help them in their old age.  But when we watched our son Andrew struggle to breathe in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit after being born prematurely, we had no idea how much God would use him to bless us someday.

Our family in front of our new van, experiencing so much of God's glory that some of us had to shield our eyes!

It was enough of a blessing for us to see Andrew being used by the Lord as he operates a Christian radio station in Chico, and to see how much love God has given him for his wife Shantel.  Things have not been easy these past few years, but God’s grace has proven to be greater than every new problem.  At a time when Andrew and Shantel needed to be focusing on remodeling their home, somehow God turned their hearts to focus on our needs instead.

We never asked or imagined that Andrew would go out on a limb and do something like this!  Even in the past few weeks as we saw God do more than we have asked or imagined by saving so many children and showing his glory by stopping so many abortions at Bakersfield’s killing center, we never realized that these blessings would overflow into our personal lives.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

(Oh, by the way, anybody want to buy a 1997 Ford Clubwagon 15 passenger van?  If you live in a place without any steep hills, no cold temperatures, and no hot temperatures… it might be just right for you!)