A new set of wheels...finally!!!

About a month and a half ago Mike was rear-ended on the highway here in Fort Worth resulting in enough damage to our precious Honda CRV that it ended up being written off. Thankfully no one was injured and the guy who hit him had insurance (an extra blessing down here judging from the many stories we've been told). It's been a long, slow, patience-testing battle with the insurance company since then, some of the complications arising out of the fact that our vehicle was still registered in Canada and the other half of the complications...well, we are not sure... :). Finally, this week on Monday we went in to sign the paperwork and received the long-awaited cheque.

The vehicle hunt didn't start on Monday...it had started weeks back as we've been watching our calendar and the very quickly approaching date of our return to Canada. But on Monday night Mike suggested something we hadn't looked into much yet: the possibility of buying privately. And so we started working our way through craigslist.com. I was a little nervous about buying privately just because it did not have quite the amount of accountability to the customer as a dealership would; but, in the hopes of maybe saving a dime or two I looked and one of the most resent posts was a 2004 Nissan Xterra priced a couple thousand below what I knew from some of my research to be its retail value. Now, that can also trigger a number of warning signs: "If it's too good to be true, it probably is", but I decided to give the seller a call the next morning for curiosity's sake and to see if we could at least take a look at it. To my surprise, in our phone conversation, as I was working my way through a list of questions, came up the tidbit of information that this guy was actually a pastor of a church in the area. We went to look at it that afternoon and instantly hit it off with him, especially with the common ground of our faith and the fact that Mike is attending Southwestern Seminary. We spent more of the time talking about church and school than we did the vehicle. :) We spent the rest of that day in contact with him, the Canadian border (since we will have to import it), doing vehicle history research, looking at other options, and praying. Then this morning we made our final decision: to purchase the vehicle. The paperwork was signed this afternoon and then we drove home our new set of wheels:

Thank you to all those of you who were praying with us about the whole situation through the last couple of months! It was so appreciated. And the Lord took care of us! :)