Shopping Brings Blessings!

We spent our Christmas vacation with Sarah's family in Cheyenne this year. We had a very cold and very windy winter storm pass through right when we were planning on traveling there, but fortunately Sarah was able to get an extra day off of work in order to get ahead of the storm, so by the time we were snowed in, we had nowhere to go.

The day after Christmas, we were planning on going to the Denver temple, but the storm had not yet passed so we decided to postpone it until the 29th. But it wasn't bad enough that evening to prevent us from driving around town, and Sarah and Hannah wanted to get in on some of the post-Christmas sales. On our way back to the house, our beloved 125,000-mile car finally gave out. The "Check Engine" light started blinking and the engine had noticeably less power-- I couldn't get it above 25 mph. Fortunately this occurred just down the street from the Petersons' favorite mechanic, so they called him up and he said we could drop it off. After the weekend there were only a couple of days left of break, and then Sarah had to go back to work, but fortunately it wasn't a serious problem and it was ready to go again Monday morning.

Sarah's parents came to pick us up and drive us back to the house, and her mom commented about how we were so blessed to have had this happen so close to the mechanic, as opposed to on the freeway between Cheyenne and Denver. I added that I was glad we decided to go shopping that night, because otherwise we might not have used the car until the drive home, and it might have happened on the cellphone-signal-challenged stretch of highway towards Torrington. Hannah voiced the obvious lesson to be learned: "See? Shopping brings blessings!"