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I needed to come down to East Tennessee for a work thing on Saturday, but decided to come a couple of days early for a Davy Crockett field trip to go along with our Davy Download N Go. Both Ben and my Mom came with me. We did enjoy a great day at Crockett Tavern yesterday, with awesome friends, Candace and Melissa, and their adorable kids. (pictures to come later, my camera lens had a huge smudge and my pics are horrible….hopefully I’ll get some soon from my sweet friends), but things sort of went downhill after that).
I’m going to share the details of this weekend with you, because I want everyone to see the miraculous way God has taken care of every detail for us. This could have been an extremely stressful time, where I felt taken advantage of being a woman, traveling out of state. But God has continued to put wonderful, kind, Christian people in our path through it all. So here’s the story.
After our day of fun with friends, we went back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner, and all was well……until I went out to start the car again. I could tell immediately that the engine was misfiring, and very soon, the “check engine” light came on.
I put out a SOS on Facebook for a reputable mechanic to look at my car, and very soon heard from Melissa that her husband knows quite a bit about cars and would come see what he could do. So I met Robert at an auto parts store and right there in the parking lot, he changed the spark plugs/wires, and when that didn’t work, the distributor cap. Unfortunately, those things didn’t fix the engine problem, but how much does Robert rock for doing that for me?!?! Did I mention it was about 8:30pm when he came?
Later in the evening I was able to talk to Tom (who is also out of town for work) and it was decided that I would have the car towed the next morning to the Honda dealership, just 6 miles down the road. Really, a Honda dealership in a fairly small town, in East Tennessee, 6 miles from our hotel. Crazy.
Mom and I soon realized we would need to rent a car. We both kind of sighed at the thought of this extra expense but I really wanted to get to my meeting on Saturday and there are no restaurants within walking distance of our hotel. So I jumped online and looked around to see if there was a car rental near the Honda dealership and found Enterprise, just a mile or so away. Looking online, I found they were running a 3-day special for $11/day. Yes, I said $11 per day, for 3 days. Total cost $37 and change. I couldn’t book that deal quickly enough! I also needed to change hotel plans. We originally were heading down to Asheville, to visit the Biltmore, after my meeting on Saturday, but that wasn’t happening now. Thankfully, I was able to cancel those hotel reservations, without penalty (even though I was past the deadline to do so), and book our current hotel for the rest of the weekend, using hotel points.
First thing, Saturday morning, I called the Honda dealership, and they said to bring the car on in and recommended a towing company for me. Within 25 minutes of calling Extreme Towing, they were here at the hotel. The nicest Christian man, Tony, dropped me off at Enterprise, then took the car down the road to the dealership. The cost was less than half what Tom told me to expect. Nice surprise. That totally rocked. So did Tony.
At Enterprise, my car was upgraded from subcompact to SUV, for that $11/day price (very nice surprise) and off I went to talk to the service manager at the Honda dealership. His name is Mark Ellison and he rocked as well. Mark was very kind to me, talked to Tom to have some “guy talk” about car maintenance, wrote us into the schedule ahead of others to hopefully get me on the road quicker, and gave me his personal cell phone number, “in case you need anything or have an emergency this weekend.” Crazy nice, these people are.
I was soon on the road to my meeting, and was there in plenty of time. Every single detail cared for, worked out, foreseen. Everything. Tom is worried the engine will need to be rebuilt and we should consider just buying a new car from this Honda dealer, and trade in my car.
But I think I’ll wait for a call from Mark on Monday morning to find out what the damage will be. I’m hoping for just one more miracle…..that it will be an easy fix and not cost thousands of dollars. Okay, so that might be 2 miracles, but I have faith it will happen. God has taken care of every detail this weekend. There’s no reason to think He’ll stop on Monday.
Oct 18, 2010 Edited to add: I received a call at 10am Monday morning. The fix was quick and easy. That’ll be $37, thank you for your business. Come again. We were on the road by noon and home by dinnertime. I told you, every detail….
Oct 18, 2010 Edited to add: I received a call at 10am Monday morning. The fix was quick and easy. That’ll be $37, thank you for your business. Come again. We were on the road by noon and home by dinnertime. I told you, every detail….
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