Friday, January 24, 2014

The New Truck

A few months ago, Dave and I started talking about getting a different truck. His was getting older and needing more parts replaced, and he wanted a diesel to tow his big trailer with. It was also losing value quickly. In one month it lost 1,000 according to KBB. He started watching Craigslist regularly, and I struggled a little in my heart because we have paid off so much debt and I didn’t want to start over. But I also knew the Lord would direct and we would follow. The diesels we found were going around 22,000-28,000. We still owed some on the one we had, which didn’t give us much to work with. He looked at a few here and there, but was patient and open to the Lord’s leading. Last week he decided it was time to post his on CL and see if there was any interest. He’s been working down the road from here and would be able to leave his trailer there and drive my car to work if his truck sold, and that would give him extra time to find a new one. He posted his truck Monday night for 12,000. I thought he was crazy, but within 24 hours he sold it and only came down 500. That was still 3,000 over the blue book price!! The guy who bought it had just sold his – and the Lord knew that was the day we needed to post it, even tho we didn’t. We scoured craigslist for the next two days and then Thursday he had the day off unexpectedly, so we went looking. I don’t even know how many dealerships we went to. We really wanted another Dodge and he preferred black or dark gray. We had been told by our bank we couldn’t get a loan on anything older than 10 years or over 100K miles. We didn’t see anything that seemed like The One. We had prayed before we left home that morning - that we would be patient and that we would agree on one truck and that God would confirm in our hearts when we found the right one. I also was still worried about ending up where we’d started with debt, but the Lord put a number in my head that I was suddenly comfortable with. After several dealerships and no lightning strikes, we stopped for lunch. I told Dave I felt like we didn’t even k now how much money we had to work with, because we hadn’t done our taxes yet and were hoping to have some extra cash to work with, but we had no idea how much it would be. All the trucks we had looked at were well over 20K, and with what he had left after paying off our first truck, that would put us right back where we started a year ago with debt. After lunch we called to check on the girls and mentioned to Joyce that we weren’t finding much. We decided that people who have Dodges love them and hang on to them – because there weren’t many used ones out there. She got on CL while we were talking and searched again. The first one that popped up (most recently posted) was in Arvada but sounded like a better option than anything we’d seen. We hung up and I looked it up on my phone and showed it to Dave. This truck was black, had 133K miles, had lots of upgrades and he was asking much less than anything we’d seen that day, and it seemed to have the most important things we were looking for. We both felt drawn to it so he called right away and left a message. Then he called our banker and left her a message asking if it was possible to get a loan on this truck, even tho it was over 100K miles. We were both ready to be done looking, and we both secretly had our hearts set on the craigslist one, so we only went to a couple more places before heading home. We were both jumpy every time his phone rang, and when we got home we finally got a call from the guy who owned the truck. He was off work and free all night if we wanted to come see it. Then we got a call from the banker who took the info for the loan application. Dave and I figured up how much we were able to put down in cash and the loan we applied for was the exact amount I had had peace about that morning. The banker thought we had enough to put down that we’d have no problem so Dave went ahead and drove down to check it out. On the way he got another call and we’d been approved for the loan! When he got there and saw it, he knew it was The One. When he asked, the guy came down 1,000 – I couldn’t believe it!! Dave is thrilled with the truck, and I am thrilled with the price. And this is the best part of the story - Dave was talking to this guy about his truck and we found out that he had posted it on CL two weeks ago. The only calls he got were from people wanting to help him sell it. No one called to buy it. A buddy of his was interested, but couldn’t find the ad. So Justin looked and couldn’t find it either. He decided to fix it, and reposted it Wednesday night. It didn’t show up til Thursday afternoon – right before Joyce searched. When I found it, it was dated Jan 23, but when I clicked on it, the ad said it had been posted a week ago. We still aren’t sure how it got all mixed up, but the Lord knew someone had to sell his truck the day before we posted ours, and we had to sell ours before we could find this one. It almost seems like God just hid the post until we were ready to find it!