The Tale of Our New Van

I am happy to report that on Friday of last week, we got ourselves a "new" minivan.  Our new van is a 2006 Honda Odyssey (see pictures below).  More on that later.  First, I want to tell you how God made it abundantly clear to us that it was time to replace the old van.

Our previous van was a 1996 Plymouth Grand Voyager which I must admit gave us many years of good service since we bought it in 2001.  In the last couple of years we have had a couple of very expensive repairs including a botched job replacing the engine mounts.  First, the mechanic replaced the wrong part, then he did not replace the full engine mount so while the engine was sound the van rumbled something awful.

We have been planning on replacing the van sometime this spring and been sort of on the lookout for the next great ride for our growing family.  We began our search in earnest a couple of weeks ago.  We prayed for God to direct us to the van He had for our family -and to make it clear.  Every search we did for a new van turned up this one:  Craig's List, Autotrader, and some local search tools as well.  So finally on Friday, I took the day off and we headed to the nearby town (about 40 miles) to check it out.

The excitement began on the way.  It was a cold, rainy day, and as we drove down the highway, suddenly the speedometer, tachometer and fuel gauge went to zero and the dash lights went off.  Since the rain was so loud I assumed the van had stalled and I pulled off the highway only to find that it was running but the dashboard had quit on me.  

I stopped at an auto parts store and replaced some fuses.  This worked for about 10 seconds.   Then the dash died again.  Closer inspection revealed the fuses were not blown, so I assumed it must be a short in the electrical system of some sort.

We checked out the new van (which everyone immediately loved) then took a break for lunch.  During lunch, the old van decided to stop shifting gears.  This was the final message to us from God that we were not going home in the old van.  

The new van is just what we all wanted.  It has all the right features and we were able to settle on a good price and drive home that day.  Everyone is so excited, and after all the drama of the day nobody really misses the old van anymore.  

We did get to make a return trip to the car dealer the next day because we are so inexperienced at buying cars we forgot the title to the old van, the second key, and the checkbook.  It turns out you need those things; however, they were kind enough to send us home in the new van with dealer plates after we signed 100 documents.

We have decided to name our van Rocket, like the star of Little Einsteins.

Check out the irony of where we bought our Honda in the pictures -- at a Toyota dealer!