June 2007 - Page 2

Miracle Month

The DOG Miracle

We have two small dogs: a 15-pound miniature German shepherd with mostly Chihuahua blood and a 6-pound Chihuahua. The larger female is named Perky and the little guy is Perky's Itty Bitty Buddy alias Buddy. They have to be taken care of while we are on the road. We've had friends who just walked them and left them at home, but Buddy is too much of a people person to tolerate so much time "alone." Then, through a friend at church, we found a family that will take them in, but they were not available the first week in June. So we were considering taking them with us as we did last year, but we were reluctant to repeat that experience and we had the additional complication of a flight in the middle of this trip. Then I got a phone call from the grandma of three children I tutor. She said, "What's up, Joyce? You've been on my mind." I explained what we were dealing with and the dog situation and she offered to keep them the first week and deliver them to the second home! Praise God, because if we'd had the dogs with us on the road... but, again, I'm getting ahead of myself. The Dog miracle is that someone out-of-the-blue called and solved the dog problem... We also made sure, since we were considering moving to Iowa (see May's report), that the family was willing to have an "open-ended" situation so we could check out possibilities of relocating in Iowa. Now, as you read ahead, remember the dogs and how complicated life could have been if they'd gone with us "to Iowa!"

The Jeep Miracle

On the way home from delivering the dogs on Sunday evening, planning to leave on Monday morning, the linkage on the transmission on our Chevy Astro went out. Okay. It's not taking us to Des Moines, so we loaded the Hyundai Sonata instead. On Monday morning we made it as far as the local post office before the Sonata's battery seemed to be dead and the car would not start. Tom's electrical volt meter was broken also so he couldn't test the battery. The little charger we had didn't get it going either and we began to wonder what ELSE was wrong with it. Called our little garage and they said it could be one of three things: needs new battery (only nine months old), starter, or the alternator... Oh dear, there's no time to figure this out, get it fixed and then make sure it is reliable for the trip. What next? Rent a van? Buy a vehicle?

Tom headed back to the garage; I went home and called our car dealer. Car dealer had a beautiful full-size conversion van with an electrically-run bed/seat in the back - but no storage... and when we had it checked out, it had an oil leak. The garage had a jeep for sale - not that the garage usually sells vehicles, but one of its regular customers had bought a new vehicle and asked the garage to display this jeep. Nick, the garage-owner, said he'd taken care of this vehicle since it was new and it was in excellent condition and would have no problem getting us to Iowa and back. So we bought it and Tom spent the rest of the day on emissions tests, getting it licensed and transferring EVERYTHING from the car to our new jeep. The miracle is that it is probably the easiest vehicle we've ever had to get in and out of! Remember ease of getting in and out of vehicles...

The Cell Phone Miracle

So FINALLY, on Wednesday we head off to Des Moines... But a small stop on the way just short of Nashville to get the car insured - an hour or so. And then another stop in Nashville... We'd been having trouble charging my cell phone and knew we'd have to get a new one soon, but were waiting for the lease to run out. Only the phone REFUSED to charge at all so we took out another hour or so and bought two new phones (for the price of one!) and had the phonebooks transferred. Praise God! As you read ahead, think phones and think how complicated it could have been if we did not have a way to keep in touch with each other...

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