Finally...

Here it is... The good news that we have been waiting for.

We are going to be payed out for our car. It has been assessed as a write off, and finally we can seriously start planning to buy a car.

To fill in, on the 22nd of Dec, our car died, after driving through about 20cm of water and flooding the engine... It broke a conrod in the engine, which for those who don't follow, means the engine is not worth repairing, and needs to be replaced. Additionally, we had about 2 inches of water inside the car... I put in a claim to my insurance company, and promptly we began the long wait, what with the madness of Christmas holidays being what they are.

A week later the car was towed away to the nearest repairer, who told us it was certain to be a write off, as it would not be worth replacing the engine, given what the car was valued. The insurance had other ideas.

The insurance assessor for the area rang Cherith, and proceeded to explain to her that they do not cover mechanical failure, and that we would be liable to pay 75% of a new engine (which would come to about $2000, on top of the fairly hefty claim excess), or we could opt to put a second hand engine, which would cost me about $1000, and would be payable by me entirely, or, option number three, which was to accept a payout of what they estimated the car was worth without an engine, which would leave me seriously out of pocket as a result. We prayed. All of those options would really leave us stuck. Especially as me live 70km from the nearest town... We needed a car. It had been 2 weeks since we had been able to go shopping. Thankfully, we had done a hefty shopping trip just before the car died, but we still relied on a little 'top-up' shopping by Cherith's dad, who worked in town.

So I rang the insurance assessor. I rangled with him for half an hour, and seemed to get nowhere. Until I mentioned the water inside the car. His smooth talking stalled. Apparently no one had told him about that (He hadn't been to see the car in person yet), and he said he would have to check it out and would get back to us.

Then on Friday, we got the call. The insurance company said that the car had been assessed as a write off,  because the inside had gone mouldy. Hardly surprising considering the amount of water that had been locked in there for two weeks! But praise God!

Don't get me wrong. I am very sorry to see the car go. It has been a faithful little car since I bought it, and well worth the money I paid for it. But it was in need of some repairs already, which I couldn't afford, and the car was highly impractical for us in our situation here (Living and working on a dirt road, a small front wheel drive vehicle is not the best option... It's not the worst either, it had worked through some awful weather for 8 months, but it was time for change).

So God has answered our prayers. And he used a hefty dose of humble mold to do it! He has a thousand ways to provide the answers to our prayers, and sometimes it is astonishing how He does it.