15 hours before our flight out of LA to come to Korea I learned we had wheel locks on our car. Without a key to the lock, they would refuse the shipment. They were so swamped that in a moment of desperation for both the initial inspector and me, she said, "Look - if I inspect your car in the garage I will let it go, but I cannot make any guarantee it will be me." While waiting for the inspection I frantically called a dealership to inquire after a spare key. The short answer is that it would take at least 2 weeks...
Chancing it, we ended up with a new inspector who likewise was busy enough that he forgot to look at the tires =) The downside was that if it got a flat in transit they would have to drill out the locks! Well, it made it through. Once here I learned that there is NO way to get a spare key here in Korea! Aaaahhh!
Enter Blessing #1: our realtor Inyoung Chang introduced us to a guy who owns a shop that works on foreign cars. $224 dollars later and home delivery of the car we are without wheel locks and had new bolts. Amazing!
Our car is gigantic. Hindsight: we should have left it in the US. This was no more evident as when we tried to squeeze through the streets near Charlotte's Preschool and in a true Titanic fashion scraped against another man's car. Here in Korea, everyone leaves their cell number on their windshield or dashboard so I grabbed a local old man staring at me, dialed the number, handed him the phone, and made a motion to advise the person on the other end of what had happened. It worked and I soon found myself staring at the other guy, neither of us being able to communicate. I was freaking out. What to do...?! I was praying he was not talking to the police. The last thing I wanted was an international incident over a scraped bumper. So I did what any service member in Korea would do; call my realtor I guess (in America a finders agent/realtor simply helps you find an apartment and that is it but Inyoung has been a part of our lives since we met her). She was there in 5 minutes. Five minutes after that the same guy who fixed our wheels was there. They both dropped everything to come help! To me, this was no small thing but one of the Lord's tender mercies and a miracle. They simply said, "Fred take your family home and we will negotiate with him and get it fixed." $340 it's all taken care of (minus our car... no plans to fix our car for a long time if ever).
Yes, this van has caused great frustration but let it be known to our posterity that the Lord has watched over us yet again.
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