The Miracle Mobile


It was just over a year ago now that the Miracle Mobile came into our lives. We knew the Lord had told us to hit the road for Mexico and every day I was scouring the newspapers and looking online for the perfect vehicle.
One day, after a time of prayer, I decided to check Craigslist one more time. When I typed in my criteria, the first van to pull up was one that I had looked at many times before. It happened to belong to the parents of my little sister’s boyfriend. After calling and making arrangements, we scheduled a day to drive up to Denver and take it for a test drive.
Before we even got there and without any discussion about it, Rachel and I both had unique experiences of feeling lead to simply ask them to give us this van. When we finally talked about it, we both thought there would be no way! The day we drove up to their house, I had one of those hazy, slow-motion experiences when I saw the van for the first time. I thought, “This is going to be in our lives for a long time.”
As we drove it around that day, we kept looking for imperfections or problems we could use to bring up in our negotiations. We couldn’t find any. We were in love.
That night as we drove back over to their house, you could feel the tension in the air between us. We decided that I would do the talking, however, I was having a hard time moving past the small talk and getting to the point. After much too long of a period, Rachel gave me one of those looks and I knew it was now or never. I finally said something to the effect of, “We love your van and it’s perfect for us. We would like to offer you half your asking price, or if you’d rather, you can give us the van and we can give you a tax-deduction.” They looked at each other and after a brief silence I offered for us to leave the room so they could discuss it. But just as quick as that, they turned back to us and said they would take the tax-deduction. We were beside ourselves with joy and couldn’t believe what we were hearing. Now we had a van, and money to head down to Mexico!
We parked our new van outside our bedroom window and many times during that night I got up to check on it and to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. When you envision something for so long and believe with your whole heart that the Lord will provide, it’s always an INCREDIBLE experience when it comes to pass.
Thank you Ernie and Kathy for your generous gift! It has blessed our family and our ministry beyond compare.

Eye! Eye! Eye!

Warning: Gross Content
(not for the faint of stomach)























That night












Day After








Day 5






Today


We can be pretty sure that great spiritual things are happening when our kids get outright attackted. The other night, we were in the Centro (center of town) getting churros. Smith wanted to spend his pesos on the jumpy castle. What could go wrong? Two minutes later, he walks up to us quietly crying, covering his right eye with his hand. When he got right in front of us, he moved his hand to show us. --You know those moments, when your kid walks up crying and you have to act all cool and calm and say, "It's not that bad."? Well, we didn't do so well with that.

At first, I thought I was going to have to kill someone. Jon thought his eye had exploded. It looked as if there was an egg under his eye lid. TWO MINUTES! How did he do that in two minutes?! Turns out he had attempted a front flip on the top of the jumpy slide and ran his eyes into his knees. Bummer. Our friend, Jordan, immediately went to get him a popsicle. Not to make him feel better, but to stop the swelling. We rushed home and our nurse-friend Joni came over to check it out. As soon as she saw it, she said, "Oh, that's good." Apparently massive swelling is fine, as long as it goes outward, not in towards the brain. Thanks Joni.