I see His hand in many things . . . .

Finding the good in the bad!
So this past week has been pretty interesting. For a while now, our dang car will just die on us, but after a few hours, it will start back up. Well, it finally quit on us - it died as my hubby was driving to work, luckily he coasted into a parking lot and even made it into a parking spot. It sat there for a couple days until we could get someone to help us tow it back to our house. It obviously decided not to start after a few hours. It sat dead for several days, at the same time, Dustin was sick as a dog. He works as a CNA (he's working on moving up the totem pole, but for now is CNA). He had been working a lot of doubles, overtime, re-roofing my mom's house, working more doubles, etc. It caught up to him and he was exhausted and one day slept for about eighteen hours, without even moving. So I went out visiting teaching the other day and was just chit chatting with the ladies and we were talking about the price of gas, so I mentioned that our car was dead and Dustin has been sick and unable to check it out, so maybe it was a blessing to have our car dead 'cuz we can't go anywhere and therefore don't have to buy outrageously expensive gas. We finished up with the first lady and went on to house number two. After being home for about thirty minutes or so, my phone rings, it's a guy in our ward. He says, "hey, I hear Dustin is sick?" I said, "how do you know that? We haven't really told anyone." To shorten the story up, he then said he knew our car was now running and that he had received his info from another guy in our ward, who is the son of lady # 1 that I went to visit teach. He then went on to say that he is in Idaho for a month and has his truck just sitting in his garage, not being used and told us to go get it while we work on getting our car fixed. It was such a blessing. I have never experienced ward members reaching out like this to help. We are probably far too prideful to ever ask for help and it was so great and the biggest blessing for these two men to jump right on the "service band wagon" and help us out. Otherwise we had no idea how we would go about getting parts for the car, and all that kind of stuff. So after Dustin's LONG day of rest, he was on the up and up. I went to google and just typed in 'my jeep won't start'. Lo and Behold others in this world have had the same problem and had asked the same question. An answer kept coming up several times - change the crankshaft sensor. So Dustin heads out to the car, finds the sensor and is a bit frustrated as he says he can't reach it and he doesn't know how anyone could without the high-tech tools that are used in a shop. So I return to google and ask how to change a crankshaft sensor. Again - lots of answers - but one little one shined the brightest - 'you need an extension.' So we go to Walmart (good old Walmart) thinking, they won't have this tool, just because we need it. But yet - there it was.
Dustin laid under the car, remained calm (even while working in this 110 degree weather) as he fought changing a crankshaft sensor in the tiniest amount of space to work with. Needless to say, he eventually got it changed out and it was do or die time. He went to start the car - we were so nervous, but it started. I was such a baby and cried. I knew what stress it had been to him to know that our car was not working and would possibly end up costing us a lot of money that we just do not have. And I could see in his face and totally feel the relief of stress leave him. It made me so happy. So, let's see - there is good in bad:
Bad, being of course - the only car we own braking down and us having no transportation. The good in the bad:
- My visiting teaching partner is so great at keeping us up on our VT.
-Lady #1 was caring enough to share our misfortune, that I jokingly mentioned, with her son, who is our home teacher.
- Two men in our ward were so willing to be of service and did not hesitate to lend a helping hand.
- Our car broke down in the summer, when we only really need to get Dustin to work, and do the occasional errand running. It could have died when we had to take Dustin to work and to school and also take Charly to school.
- Google :)
- Walmart :) ( although being able to go there puts us out of house and home 'cuz we love to go there and always end up spending far more than we need to.)
- There were others before us with the same problem, which helped us to fix our problem.
- It cost us much less than we thought it would to fix it.
- Dustin - what a blessing it is that he is so smart and so handy, I'm telling you - the boy can fix anything. I love him.
So moral of the story is, when things go wrong it's easy to get mad and place blame where it does not belong, but instead we should find the good in the bad because His hand reaches forth, and often times in the goodness or mishaps of others. And clearly there is obviously more good in the bad than the bad itself.