Sometimes things just work out so cool and so right. Such is
the story of how we sold our van.
For some odd reason, Ben and I have this gift, well really
we have an awesome family, but our gift is that we have various family members
that leave the country and leave us a car. It's happened twice to us now. We
were given/bought a van at a great price from Ben's sister's family several
years back and my dad left to do work in London for 3 years and asked us to
watch over his car. At several times in our marriage, we have discussed going
down to one car to save money and all of a sudden we have 3 cars. We
contemplated keeping all 3 cars but we
just don't have the room or money to do that at this time in our life. So that
brought us to selling a car. We love our Ford Explorer- the first car I bought
by myself! And, we needed to keep my dad's car for when he returns to the
United States, so it wasn't that hard of a decision. We put the van up for sale
on Craigslist and got several hits right away. We made the mistake of putting
OBO (Or Best Offer) on the listing and we got some offers, but they were
crummy. One lady offered us a whole $1500 less and when you're selling your car
for $3500 that is a lot off and not a best offer at all. We worked with 4 people
and decided that we needed to pull the listing and start over. However, Ben did
not pull the listing because he didn't sign in with craigslist, and therefore
did not know how to delete it. A week or so went by and for some reason I
thought Ben did delete it because we didn't get any calls. During that week, we
decided that we were going to actually try to keep 3 cars after all. That was
until I got the call. Well, we got lots more calls, but I ignored most of them,
except this one call. To be honest, I have no clue why I answered this call. I
just did. This call ended up being from a pastor in Pueblo. He asked me some more details about car, and I decided to be up front with him and tell him that the car is
actually $3500 firm. You know what he said? He told me that was just fine
because he had exactly $3500 to spend. Can you believe that? Even though I didn't want to sell the car all by myself; however, I ended up selling it because Ben had to work and the pastor and another gentlemen came down the same day we spoke on the phone and purchased the car. All in one day- fabulous!
The story about the family who bought the car is even cooler
than actually selling the van, although I am not complaining about selling
the van. This pastor sent out an email
to his congregation on a Monday and raised exactly $3500 for a car for single
mom of 5 going through a divorce. She was currently in a custody battle and the
judge told the lady the only way that she was able to keep her kids with full
custody was to have a working, reliable car that would hold her entire family.
Amazing that our van ended up being someone's miracle car to keep her kids.
And, the congregation raised that much money in 2 days, they came down and
bought the car on a Wednesday. That is how a church family should be! How neat
is that!?
