honey, call the mechanic, the shooby dooby doo whop is broken again

As a friend recently wrote in an email to me, I'm always surprised when I'm surprised that following Heavenly Father's commandments = blessings. Not that I'm guilty of some egregious sin or omission, but when I do (A), I can expect (B) from Heavenly Father, without fail. Why haven't I grasped that? He's promised us blessings if we do certain things. If we exercise our faith and just do what's right, we'll reap the benefits. Duh.

What brought all this on?

Our truck died Monday. And I mean died. Now, several things are interesting regarding this. One being that it was somewhere around 862 degrees outside at 4pm when Danny was driving home from Mesa when all of a sudden the truck keeled over and he had to pull off the road. Blessing #1: Danny was about 8 minutes from home as opposed to 45 miles away which is where his Paramedic Class is held in Mesa.

He called to tell me something was wrong with it <----actually, his first words were "How much is in our emergency fund?" which let me tell you, is a great way to start a conversation. Anyhoo, he explains, and I tell him that he should call Brother Brown from our ward who is not only the grandparent of the baby I watch, and not only a good friend of Dan's (they work in the library at the church together), but also an auto mechanic. He decides to do so. He calls Brother Brown, explains the situation, and here we find Blessing #2: Brother Brown was literally going to pass by him on the road in five minutes as he drove home.

Dan then calls me back, letting me know that help is on the way when his phone dies. Blessing #3: the phone died AFTER he'd told me he was stranded, and AFTER he'd gotten help which was five minutes away. Dan had no water and although I'm sure a passerby would have eventually helped him, I was mega major thankful that the phone had lasted until these two important steps were taken care of.

So, they decide that this is likely a head gasket or cracked block or some *insert automotive term here* nonsense, which in my head translates to "get that checkbook ready baby, cuz this ain't gonna be cheap." Brother Brown loans us a tow rope and little brother comes to tow the truck away. (Also a blessing, now that I think of it) We are then able to contact Brother Housari from another ward who is also an auto mechanic and has his own shop relatively close by. He says to come on over. He looks at it, gives us a quick diagnosis, and says we're likely going to be out of a truck for the next week or two, unfortunately.

The next day or so, Brother Housari calls back, informing us that not only is the radiator busted, but the *insert automotive mumbo jumbo here* on the head gasket and there are also cracks on the *eeny meeny pepsolini ooh bop bop olini* and while we have all that out we might as well replace the *craptastic I'm made of plastic* part cuz it needs swapping out every 35,000 miles and due to that, we'll need to replace the entire engine. Which is easier, but costlier. Probably somewhere around the tune of $1800. Whoa nelly. Now, let it be said that we are not independently wealthy, but we did have enough to cover this in our lil' ol emergency fund. We told the dear brother to go ahead and do his thing, we'd rather spend $1800 on a new engine than buy an $1800 car. (Cuz honey, we don't do credit around here) And here comes Blessing #4: the same day, we got an $1800 check from pell grant for Danny's tuition this year, tuition that was already paid for by his work, (and just in case that sounds shoddy, it was his work that told us it was ok to apply for the grant). Thank heavens, literally, for the law of tithing. Ain't Heavenly Father awesome?