Dream Car

“The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it.” (Proverbs 10: 22)

Siew thought that driving my 12-year old Infiniti from Los Angeles to Kansas City in the winter time was dangerous. I thought that getting the Infiniti towed back was expensive (towing fee, my plane ticket and the luggage fees). Therefore, I had to pray. Going into the church morning prayer meeting at 5a.m., I “demanded” an answer from God by 12 p.m., “Because it’s already 5 days (3 working days) before our departure for Kansas, I got to know by noon. Please, Father!”

After the prayer meeting, Pastor Esther asked me if I had called George, a brother who just opened a used car shop. I said that I had not and she said that I should. Five minutes late, Pastor Joseph asked me again if I had called George. He was just at his shop last week and saw a van that I might like. I was thinking that there was no way that I would buy another car and transported both of them to Kansas City in 5 days. There were still a lot of other things needed to be done before we left Los Angeles.

I went back to the chairs to pray and suddenly, someone handed me an envelope with a donation of $3000 and on it, it wrote, “For car buying!” My eyes opened wide, thinking that now I got to check out the car regardless I wanted to buy it or not.

That day was a Friday and it was raining hard. There were only about 7, 8 cars in the lot since his shop was still in the process of applying for the business license so not officially opened. And there was only one van, white 2006 Sienna. I tested drive in the rain around the blocks. I don’t know much about cars. It was raining so hard that I did not even want to open the hood and checked the engine. So I prayed again, “I only wanted to know if my Infiniti should be towed or driven back. You want me to buy this car?” I could hardly hear any answer, but I felt this affirmative peace about buying it. So I drove it back and told George that I would buy it. He said, “By the way, do you know that this is an 8-passenger van and it got leather seats.” In my mind, I was thinking that I did not want 8-passenger seats or leather seats. Could the van be cheaper if it did not come with 8-passenger or leather?

The van will be ready in 5 days, yes, in 5 days, the day of Siew and the kid’s flight back to Kansas. George would do the brake pad change, oil change, tire rotation, replacing a seat cover and all free of charge. The van was pretty cheap already (I checked the bluebook price before I went) and I began to think, “Is there something wrong with the car?”

On the way home from George’s shop (in my Infiniti), I was reminded something that Siew and Joshua were praying for two years ago. They were praying for an 8-passenger van. I laughed at them and mildly admonished them, “We are full-time pastor family. We will never afford an 8-passenger van.” I just wanted a car with a working CD player and a working A/C. Despite my unbelief, they insisted praying for it for two years. Finally when we moved to Kansas City, they stopped praying for it, thinking that now we are living by faith, without any steady income, we will never get that van. When I was reminded of their prayers, tears began to swell in my eyes. I would actually drive a better car when living by faith than living by salary. This is unbelievable, and it’s their dream car, too. Wow, kingdom economics is new and strange to me and it wows me! I should ask them to pray for a dream house.

We were staying at Janice’s house when we were at Los Angeles. When Janice and Karen who also lived there saw the van and found out about the price, they all thought that it was “a steal.” Later Nora came to Kansas for the One Thing conference and sat in our van, she commented that her father-in-law just bought the exact same year, same model van for $5000 more.

Last October when we flew back to Taiwan to visit my family, I felt that my spiritual eyesight was opened and I could sense some things spiritually wrong about Taiwan. I could hardly breathe in the first few days, spiritually and physically. My dad’s health was not doing well and my mom was getting too old and too tired to take care of him. I thought that I might end up staying in Taiwan and at this spiritual condition for a long while. Plus, in my prayers, I sensed that God might eventually lead me back to Taiwan or China. I became suffocated and weary about my present and my future. I asked God for some kind of comfort and encouragement about this situation. The Word I got was, “by the way he came he will return” (2Kings 19: 33a). This was strange. First of all, the context of this verse was about a vicious Assyrian king got pulled back from attacking Jerusalem. Then, what could it mean to me personally? I wrote down on my spiritual journal but I concluded, “I don’t get this.” After some thinking, I thought that it might mean that I would fly back to the U.S. the same time as we planned. That was a bit of stretched since this verse talks about “the way he came”, not “the time” he planned.

My dad’s situation got resolved unexpectedly smooth so we could fly back to Los Angeles as we have originally planned. We got back to Los Angeles on Thursday night and Friday, and on the following day, I bought the Sienna. Six days later, I drove my new 2006 Sienna back to Kansas City. It was a 27-hour drive and as I was driving, I used the familiar stereo and saw the familiar tire pressure sign coming up. On the second day, it dawned on me that this is what that verse means, “by the way he came he will return.” We drove the borrowed white Sienna (Pastor Joseph) from Kansas to Los Angeles, and now, I drove my own white Sienna back from Los Angeles to Kansas City. I knew how to operate the car well since I have four months of practice with the borrowed Sienna. (Ex. Air pressure light came up from time to time through the drive but I wasn’t too scared because it happened with Joseph’s Sienna before.) God knew how little I knew about cars so He even gave me a practiced gift before He granted me the real one. He is so caring and so detailed. And this van not only has a working CD player, but it comes with a 6-CD changer.

Snow was pretty for the first few houra and then there were all the shoveling, car skidding and accidents around us. With three kids in their car seats, they brought all the dirt, branches, ice melts and weeds onto the car and to the car seats. Cheryl sits right behind me and she kicks my seat every time. The first day that we went out after the snow, I went to take her down. As I opened her door, I saw the back of my car seat was all muddy and dirty. Thank God that it was leather seat so it would be easy to wipe clean and be taken care of. I was weepy again, not because Cheryl messed up my car, but I realized that God provided us leather seats because He knew that we would need it.

I posted a prayer request letter on my blog on November 1st last year before we left for Los Angeles. God has granted me all of the ten requests that we asked for, especially the item about providing a new transportation vehicle.