The Lord's Trade-In Program

Tuesday Evening, Colorado Springs at Grandma and Grandpa Leavitt's house -- Rachel left the house at around 6PM to do a little shopping in anticipation of our return trip home to Provo the next morning. Normally, I would have come with her, but for some reason I was too absorbed in my laptop so I let her go on her own. After a little while, the rest of the family (grandparents, me and my children, and Paula and her family) prepared for a weiner roast and s'mores. At about 7:30, I began thinking that Rachel had been gone a little long, and wondered if she had gotten lost -- after I'm the one that usually does the driving when we go to Colorado to visit. At around 8PM the rest of the adults began to wonder outloud about Rachel's absence when she walked through the front door.

Rachel informed us that she had been in ancident, but that she was fine, and that she had recieved a ride home from a police officer. According to the paperwork that Rachel returned home with and her own account, at 6:10 PM, Rachel made a left-hand turn on the corner of North Carefree and Bloomington, in front of the Super Target just down the road from my parent's house. An oncoming Buick SUV with two passengers entered the intersection at the same time and must have begun to brake upon seeing Rachel, but not soon enough to collide with the Voyager's front passenger side. The Voyager's air bag deployed.

The first thought that raced through Rachel's mind was that she hoped that everyone in the other vehicle was okay, especially if there had where children. There was a male driver and female passenger (presumably husband and wife) in the SUV. Neither receive any injuries. Thier vehicle escaped with much less damage than our van and they were able to drive away in it after the police reports had been filed. Rachel also checked out well, sustaining only minor scratches to one finger and the side of one foot.

The real casualty (if we can call it that) was our 1993 Plymouth Grand Voyager had been towed away to a holding yard. Honestly, everyone else in the family seem happy to see it go, but I confess that having had taken so good care of it over the years, it was hard to lose it in an instant. It became a vivid personal, reality check of how quickly life can change. Mine was a mixture of emotions between absolute gratitude that my wife escaped virtually unscathed and confusion as we suddenly were stranded hundreds of miles away from home and without a vehicle that we had worked so hard for so long to take so good care of.

Granted we had old, rusty minivan with over 270,000 miles on it. But it ran well. In fact, in anticipation of the trip, we had just had the oil changed, tires rotated, and tags renewed for another year (all the week before the trip). The one minor issue discovered in the pre-trip inspection was an oil leak that would cost over $1000 to fix. We went without that repair, and still the car performed well the whole trip over, running just as good as when we first bought the car five years ago. That's what made it so hard for me to see it go. I've never really thought I got too attached to cars, but Rachel says I do. I guess it's that way with anything you take good care of.

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Wednesday morning, the day we were suppose to be leaving for home, I got an early start to the day. My mom's minivan was in the shop, so that left my parents with only my dad's truck. Dad let me barrow the truck for the day, and following his suggestion, I began to search the local, small used car dealers for a minivan to get our family back to Utah. I stopped in first, however, at the tow yard where our wrecked Voyager was being stored.

The front of the frame had been bent by the impact of the collision to the point that the hood could no longer shut. Plastic protruded from the wheel well on the front passenger side, rubbing against the tire itself. As mentioned earlier, the air bag had deployed. The electrical system was completely disabled (probably a safety feature as a result of the air bag being launched).

The van was gone, and I made the decision with the help of the folks at the tow yard to send it to the the "scrapper". I asked them if I could take off the tires, as they were fairly new. The owner called me a red neck, and added that that was pretty bad when a tow truck driver was calling me a red neck. I let it go at that, and went to clean out the old van and left it in the tow yard where it'll wait until they receive the title to tow it to the junk yard.

The rest of that day, I kept hearing "Clunkers from Cash" from every car salesman I talked to about what had happened. I was quick to point out that the car was undriveable, and left it at that. (Rachel and I are getting a little fed up with all the government's bailout attempts, but that's a topic for another post at another time.)

After spending a good part of the morning (and I had started early) searching the used car lots, I returned home to continue searching online. I remember hearing about a former bishop of mine getting a minivan at a great price at an auction several years back. I searched to see if there were by chance any auctions taking place within the greater Denver area (1 hour to the north), and found one taking place at 6PM that evening. There was another potential listing also up in the Denver area that I had wanted to look at as well.

When my dad got off of work, we drove up to Denver to face rush-hour traffic and made it to the auto auction just a half-hour before it started. This was my first time attending an auction of any type, but had found several minivans that had the potential of meeting our needs. Not having the time to properly research the vehicles, we paid as close attention as possible to as many details as we deemed important and finally had narrowed the selection down to three vans. The first two vans we then determined had too many minor issues to worth the trouble. The third ultimately ended up being well beyond my price range. At that point we left the auction, still with no vehicle.

We made our way back down to the south end of Denver to look at one more minivan that potentially would meet our needs. It checked out well, and handled well in a test drive around the neighborhood. I honestly couldn't find anything wrong with the vehicle, but as I discussed it with my Dad, I told him something just seemed off. That is when I felt a confirmation of the Holy Spirit. I discussed it with Rachel over the phone. As she was quite anxious to be getting home, she encouraged me just to get it. I explained to her my reservation and the Spirit confirmed within me again that I should move on. So we left south Denver also without a vehicle.

That night, my parents decided that they would fly to Utah instead of drive for their planned trip that weekend making their minivan available for us to take back when it got out of the shop on Thursday. I went to bed exhausted.

We spent the following day, Thursday, preparing for the trip home and then left early in the afternoon in my mom's minivan headed back to Provo. The return trip was fortunately uneventful. We pulled into Provo in the early morning at around 4 AM after taking several breaks along the road home. I got little more than 4 hours of sleep on Friday.

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Rachel had to work Friday afternoon. With a two day window left before we were virtually vehicle-less (plus my parents coming into town on the following morning) I set out to search again for vehicles via online listings in Utah. Following my normal morning routine, I took time to search the scriptures and write in my journal. In my journal, as I made note of the auction I had attended in Denver, I felt impressed to go into more detail than I would have otherwise. It seemed strange, but I did it.

Afterwards, I began the search again for vehicles and located a dealer and also an auto auction house with some minivans on their lot up in the Salt Lake area. After Rachel went into work and Emma was off at a friend's for the afternoon, I took my four boys up with me to Salt Lake to look at cars. Our last stop was the auction house. The next auction was to be held Saturday morning. We got a listing of cars on the lot that were up for bid. We went out and located all the minivans on the lot and I analyzed them as closely as I could with four boys in tow. After only a half hour, we headed home that evening. I was utterly exhausted, near hopeless, and almost completely overwhelmed by my situation, and still without a vehicle.

Saturday morning found me on my knees, about as humbled as I could have been. After prayer, I felt to go back and review what I had written about auctions the day before. I performed several vehicle history reports on vehicles up for bid then headed off to Salt Lake with three kids in tow this time to pick up my parents from the Salt Lake Airport. I then headed over to the auto auction. My dad and I got out to look at several of the vehicles I had inspected from the day before.

At this point I had narrowed the search down to two cars. We looked at them both. My dad was only half impressed. He then walked a few lengths down the lot and located another van, and said to me, "What's wrong with this one?" It had higher mileage than the other two and more exterior body dents and dings than one of the other ones, but the inside was well kept and had any and all the features we could have hoped for in a new van. I called Rachel and had her run another vehicle history report on this van, just so we knew what we were getting into if we did purchase it.

I then sent my parents on their way back down to Provo with the three kids and told them I'd find my way home some how. I proceeded to register for the auction, leaving a security deposit and filling out some preliminary paperwork. The auction began at 11 AM. It was held inside a garage-type atmosphere with two large doors for vehicles to drive straight through as they were being presented.

In the beginning there were well over 50 persons in attendance. As the first hour wore on, the crowds seemed to shift from interested public attendees to more of a seasoned group of car dealers. The auctioneer and associates were all just as you would image them at any auction you've seen in the movies. They encourage competition between interested parties and tried as hard as they could to get the bids as high as they could go.

The auction wore on into the second hour, the first minivan with lower mileage came up for bid and I sat back to see what would happen. The minimum bid started out too high, and to my surprise had no interest from anyone in the audience. The second van with lower miles came up for bid, with a lower minimum bid, but still just as little interest. I let them both pass without any action.

As the vehicle my dad pointed out to me got ready to be driven over, I ran over to where it was parked and asked the driver if I could ride back to the auction garage with him. He consented and we jumped in and sped down the lot to the auction garage. It drove well. I jumped out as it was getting ready to be staged and found a seat in the audience, which by this point almost three hours later had dwindled down to no more than 10 people in the audience. The van came in and the auctioneer began rattle off some jumbled noise of numbers that I couldn't decipher. I wasn't about to raise my hand until I could understand what I was bidding for. Finally, he began to make sense and the starting bid had been taken by another party.

It was within my predetermined price range, so I place a counter-bid. The other gentleman raised it higher. I countered again. He must not have been that interested because at that point the other bidder declined to go higher and as there was no one else there interested, the van was declared "Sold! on an offer" to me. What that ment was that the seller had to be contacted to see if he would accept my bid, for it was quite low. A phone call later and and counter offer to the seller and the van was mine for an extremely reasonable amount that we were able to pay for without financing.

After the paperwork was complete and I was sitting in the van waiting to leave the lot, it began to hit me what had happened that day, and how the Lord's hand had led me up to this point. The reality of this blessing and how the Lord felt it important enough to bless us with a comfortable vehicle was driven in as I rode home in the nicest vehicle I have ever had the privilege of driving.

I told my oldest son later in the afternoon that I felt quite certain that Heavenly Father had blessed us with a nice car and that we ought to express our appreciation to him by taking good care of it. I'm still not sure why or what we've done to merit this temporal blessing, but there seems to be some unseen divine logic at play in all this.

This stands as yet another witness of the Lord's hand in our lives. I'm convinced that we were no more worthy or qualified than anyone else to receive this blessing, but that these same blessings can be had by anyone who will turn to the Lord in His own way and in His own time. But where we had a good, old reliable vehicle sitting in our driveway at the beginning of the week, we now have a visual reminder of the Lord's mercy and love towards our family sitting in our driveway! What a week it has been.