Our Happy Honda Story...

Sometimes I worry that if I don't write things down, time will have a way of eroding the details that make events and moments so exquisite, and they may come off as mundane, or worse yet, coincidence.

One of these happened this last week.  Last Wednesday night, our car was stolen.  Our tried and true, rusty blessing was no where to be found when Bryan went to leave for work.  When he first noticed, he ran next door to his mom's, hoping she was having a senior moment and brought both of our cars to her house, but no such luck :)  I supposed she's too young to be having that bad of a senior moment, but we were hoping :)

So we called the police, and after taking some information after the officer got to our house, he pretty much told us that if we got it back, it would be stripped and ruined...I guess car thieves love Honda's because they are relatively easy to steal and profitable to strip and sell the parts.  I wrote on Facebook that since it had been running for quite some time on tithing and prayers, I was pretty certain they would find it broken down a mile down the road.  I spent all day Thursday moping, wondering how in the world we were going to get by with one car.  Looking back, I'm pretty embarrassed about how upset about it I was.  Things always work out, always, so why do I allow myself to get so worked up each and every time something goes wrong.  I digress... :)  Zerin kept praying that the people that took the car would have a change of heart would give it back.  I didn't want him to be disappointed so I told him not to feel bad if his prayers weren't answered the way he wanted.  It never even occurred to me that getting it back in one piece was a possibility.  After all we've been through, how do I have so little faith...ugh!!!

Friday morning, after getting the kids out of the door for school, I get a call from a cell phone, and it's Officer Hadley, telling me they had found our car.  I think I even asked him how many pieces it was in.  He was like, you won't believe this, but it seems like they didn't do anything to it.  I didn't believe him :)  I asked him where it was, and he gave me the address.  Get this, it was one mile away.  One mile.  Nothing had been stolen.  Nothing was ruined, other than the ignition was a little messed up because they had used a special key to take it (which is another really odd piece to this story).  Usually, the guys that have those keys have them to take cars to these chop shops, not for a little one mile joy ride...a joy ride in a 17 year old car...does this not seem really strange to anyone but me?!  The detectives dusted it for fingerprints, but there really weren't any good ones, but in a way I was glad.  Part of me likes to think that Zerin's prayers were answered, and that whoever took it did have a change of heart and so I didn't want them to get in trouble if they did.

We have lots of fun theories about what happened...

1. Bryan says that because he has literally prayed every time he droves it so he could get to where he's going, and that since most likely, the thief didn't pray prior to taking it, it just died, and they had to ditch it.
2. Maybe once they started driving they heard Elder Maxwell's voice coming from the stereo (Bryan had been listening to talks) and maybe it guilted them into giving it back.  Maybe.
3. I like to think that the 3 Nephites showed up blocking the road and spooked them into running off without the car...I have always wanted to be the author of a great Mormon legend ;)

I guess we'll never know, but it doesn't matter, I am just so, so grateful!!!

The police had to jump start it for me, because since the theives messed up the ignition it was stuck in the on position so it had drained the battery.  I had a hard time getting the key in the ignition and turning it, but once we got it going, I went to our car repair place.  I was planning on a couple hundred + dollars to fix it, but when I went back, the kid who helped us said he just wiggled it, and it worked fine so there was no charge.  He was standing next to his boss, so I'm thinking he was just playing dumb, because there was no way wiggling it fixed that problem.  But I went to start it and it was as good as new.  I could have hugged him, but then that would have blown his cover, so I just said something stupid like "I can't believe it!  Thank you!" over and over again :)

So that's our little Honda miracle.  It's funny how just a few weeks ago I was thinking how hard I had it because we didn't all fit in our van.  Heavenly Father has a very efficient way of helping me to be grateful for the many blessings I do have rather than focusing on what I don't.