Practical matters

It’s been a whirlwind around here! Hannah’s birthday party is tomorrow, so we’re all a-flutter getting ready for that. It’s a butterfly party.

Anyway, we have a general idea what kind of a van we’re looking for, for those of you that have been curious. I have the details up on our Get Involved! page. If we could get this specific van donated (and yes, God could indeed do such a thing) then that would save us almost 1/2 of the Outgoing Funds we still need to raise. Of course, we may still need to raise some of that because we need to buy a trailer for it as well.

We’re looking for a 2000-2005 Chevy Astro or GMC Safari passenger van, white, in good condition. Of course, the newer the better. I went to look at a couple this week, and I wrote a couple specifications down on the Get Involved! page. One thing that mystifies us are the child seat anchors. We’d like 4 of them, or more importantly 2 in the middle seat, so that Hannah and Nathanael could both be behind us. Some have 3 anchors, and some have 4, but we’re not sure if we can install a 4th or not. If anyone knows the answer to that one, let us know.

Anyway, if you know of anyone that might have one to donate, we could likely find a way to give them a tax receipt for it as a gift in kind.

In other news, do you know how much our rent is increasing? 9,171 Yen a month! That’s $90 Canadian, US$81.50, MXN$893 – however you slice it, it’s a HUGE increase. We’ve never seen an increase remotely close to this. And that’s not the only increase we’re facing, so we’d appreciate your prayers about that.

The good news is, we got news of some new pledges for our monthly support this week. Praise the Lord! I don’t know if our rent will be much cheaper in Cuernavaca, but it sure would be nice to be paying rent in Mexico instead of Canada. Here’s hoping…

The weekend was over, so it was time to check into van issues. When we were away in Prince Albert, I was concerned about our tires (among other things), so I checked out the spare. The spare tire is hooked up underneath the van at the back, and it looked fine.

Now that we’re home, and Monday had rolled around, I went outside to check the tires again. I needed to make a decision – should we get new tires right away? How many? Which ones? So, I checked them out and … wait a minute …

At first I thought I was just confused. But … no. There was no spare tire! It was gone! Poof! Vanished!

I took it over to a mechanic, and we took another look. It seems likely that the assembly just got rusted and it came right off. But how in the world a whole spare tire fell off the van without us hearing anything or noticing I’ll never know.

Anyway, the good news is that the mechanic happened to have an old spare tire kicking around that fit, so we now once again have a spare. But this time it’s just sitting inside – we’re going to delay fixing the assembly (and replacing any more tires) until we decide what to do about purchasing another van (which we need to do before Mexico anyway). We’re working on that – I hope to visit a dealership or two later this week, then I’ll let you know what we’re planning. Meanwhile, I hope we don’t end with a tire that looks like the one below! But if we do, we’ll be ok, thanks to our spare change.

Our van home again after its trip to SK and back
If you’ve been keeping up with our blog, you know that we’ve had some van trouble. We got some maintenance done, but it looks like the maintenance and repairs that are coming up may run into the thousands. Last you heard, we were hoping it would get us home from Saskatchewan.Well, first the good news. It did! It seems like the problem we were originally concerned about has been solved. However, there were enough other problems with it that we were more concerned than ever. I think it was running on prayer the whole way home!And now, the bad news. We woke up yesterday morning to find that our colds (if that’s what they are) were worse than ever. What’s up with that? So we were thankful that the trip went without incident, because we weren’t feeling well as it was.

When we arrived home, we got our mail. We were shocked to find out that some of our insurance is going up – waaaay up, meaning another large monthly expense. Then we opened another insurance letter. We discovered that the coverage of one item had run out, meaning another expense.

Then we read a notice from our building manager, informing us that our rent was going up – waaaaaay up. (It’s starting to sound like The Friendly Giant around here – “Look up….waaaaaaay up….”. Sorry, Canadian joke)

Then I was reminded that we were coming home to a computer that wasn’t working. For some reason, just before we left home it decided it was no longer going to boot up. It’s something else that needs to be replaced – but for now hopefully I can get it working temporarily (we had already decided it wasn’t going to Mexico with us – we’re just trying to make it last until we leave!).

So we came home being sick faced with a multitude of upcoming expenses (and some other inconveniences that I haven’t even mentioned).

Recently I heard musician Don Wyrtzen talking about the many many Psalms in the Bible that are laments. He said he sometimes wondered why so many Psalms were so “depressing”, but he came to see them from a different perspective. He said “It’s like a black velvet curtain against which the diamond of God’s grace is showcased”.

There’s no doubt that we need a lot of God’s grace right now – grace that seems all the brighter against the backdrop of these challenges. Please pray that God’s grace would fill our lives and hearts!

Of course, there’s good news too. As I already mentioned, we’re home safe. We got news of new monthly financial support. And in the good and the bad, God is present … as always.

I just thought I’d stop by with an update. We think we got the problem on the van fixed – at least the problem I was talking to you about the other day. We got something fixed – whether it was the right thing or not remains to be seen! But anyway we’ve been driving the van around town, and so far so good.

Lord willing tomorrow morning we’ll be on the road and heading back to Calgary. We’re hoping to see Shari’s sister Amy before we leave here, but she had car trouble too and has been having a few adventures trying to get here!

We haven’t had much internet access on the road, so if you’ve been trying to get a hold of us this past week, please be patient. We’ll try to get back to answering emails and phone messages early next week. Thanks for thinking of us, and we’ll talk to you again soon!