See....I told you we needed better transportation!
OK...so maybe we're not really using a mule to get around. But when we were broke down in the middle of nowhere Guatemala last week, I would've seriously considered a mule.
Here's the deal. We thought we'd found a 2000 Chevy S-10 4 door 4x4 truck to buy. The owner is a friend of Manuel's (the guy who lives in our house with us and his family...and he's the guys on the mule in the pic). Just before we purchased it, the owner found that it was having transmission problems in addition to other problems the mechanics had already discovered. The owner was amazingly honest and told up about the problems and gave us back the money we'd already put down as a down payment to hold the truck. That was a blessing to discover the problems ahead of time! Now we have several donations, about $7000 in hand, with which to buy a used vehicle. What we really need is a good used van. Preferably the 14 passenger kind so that we don't have to rent vans for $100/day when teams come. Also, a van would allow us to cart around the 8 of us (w/o any visitors) and our stuff w/o out the hassle of rainy season which starts (in theory) in May and ends 6 months later.
In the meantime, Steve and a friend left their home in California early last Friday (March 13th) to drive his truck here to us. He purchased it for $300 and he's donating it to us. Now that's a servant! Today he's staying at a friend's house in Mexico and he hopes to get to the Guatemala border on Saturday. Our neighbor, who is a lawyer, says that getting through the border can take weeks and even a month to get all the paperwork processed. (Not to mention that the border is a dangerous place to be.) You can speed up the process, but of course this comes with a hefty price. So, we're trying to figure out exactly what to do and I promise you that we and all those here on our ministry team have been praying for the Lord to bring to us or show us the vehicle He has planned for us. And, of course, we've been praying daily about Steve and his friend arriving safely and all the details that surround the border crossing. Please join us in prayer about these things.
By the way, I know somebody in Virginia that is seriously considering donating their truck and/or van to us in Guatemala. We'll know more about this process once we get Steve here, but if you know a person who would feel led to drive to drive a vehicle from Virginia to Guatemala, please let me know. This trip would be extremely dangerous, especially for an American. And I'd strongly suggest that the driver and/or passenger be Latino and able to strongly hold their own in Spanish.
I'll post pictures of this new truck on the blog once it gets here.
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