My New Baby

So, as you all know from the fact that I posted about this a week or so ago, God surprised me with another job and I am so humbled and amazed by how He works. If I never believed in the power of specific prayer, I do now. Many times while I was sending in applications and so on and so forth I prayed and asked God for specifics. I asked Him for something close, something Christian, and preferably something that was four hours a day, and not at 5 in the morning and something that would allow me to spend time and vacations with my family and please, please, please something that I could handle (which basically meant that I didn't want to go with a job where I'd have to endure the dreaded 'morning rush' (getting a million residents up in the morning for breakfast by 8).

God didn't send conclusive evidence of an answer right away and I got a bit worried. I finally forced myself to accept the fact that I would probably have to get a 2nd shift CNA job (which meant that I would be working 8 hours into the night and spending about 1-1/2 hours at home on weekdays due to my other job in the morning) and completely cut myself off from normal living.

Not the most welcoming thing to contemplate.

And then God comes along and works it out so that I am now employed to take care of one young and wonderful Christian woman for 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, in a setting that is more comfortable to me than an agency, and she lives 7 miles away. Don't anyone ever tell me that God doesn't listen to specifics or care about every detail.

And the first thing that my dad said when I told him I got the job was "you need to get a car."

Erg.

Let me begin by stating that my interest in cars is about nil. I had a few preferences and little to no knowledge of what I was getting into.

That ended the minute I started looking.

To get down to the point, I basically told God "You dropped this job into my lap, it's fifteen minutes away from my house and I need a vehicle to get me from point A to point B without taking a bus. Please either drop a car in my lap or give me the wisdom to see the right one when it comes along."

I was figuring on the wisdom.

So I began my search.

My dad and I traipsed through car lots, my brother and I traipsed through websites. My dad and I took a road trip to a dinky little car dealership only to find that they had just sold the car we were looking for. We went to another lot and test drove a car that fit my criteria almost perfectly but my dad ruled it out because it made to many unidentifiable noises.

I was getting a little discouraged.

All I wanted was a four-door car for 6 to 7 thousand dollars with less than 100,000 miles on the odometer that had a cd player, air conditioning, power windows and remote entry and preferably in a sane color. I was even willing to give up the windows and entry to squeeze in a possibility.

I went into work last Monday, after another round of car-less-ness had occurred over the weekend and one of the guys who works for my dad asked me (naturally) if I had gotten a car yet. I said no and he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and said "I've got one for you" (or something like that. I'm not going by the gospel of the letter right now when it comes to recording conversations...).

His son-in-law was upgrading and selling his old car for an extremely low price. I looked at the paper and immediately figured it was another wash because the odometer read 105,000 miles. But my dad said we might as well look at it because it had everything else I wanted and was several thousand dollars less than I had expected to pay. I said why not. I had already been disappointed once, so what did it matter?

We went in and looked at it, took it out for a drive and my dad said we'd be fools if we didn't take it. It was really a neat little car - a little more sporty, perhaps, than I would have preferred, but beggars can't be choosers - and I could come up with no real, legitimate reason to say no.

We shook on the deal, and picked it up yesterday. I got plates for it this morning and here it is! (Yes, my camera and I are still estranged; I was lame and took this with my phone. I hope no one wanted interior shots.)

(Yup, and that's my house in the background...)

And that's my testimony for today on the provision of God. Thanks all for reading!

Till next time!


P.S. Take a gander at the new blog design. Rachel over at Rainy Days Blog Design and I spent a good...erm...many hours working through the rigmarole of HTML and Gimp and stuff (I wasn't much help with all my picky opinions) to get this on the page. Hope it suits!
JR