Well, it's been awhile. Cooking and cleaning have gotten easier and Juan Carlos and I are really settling into married life, though we've also faced another huge trial in our lives. We have been planning to go to Mexico in December of 2008 for quite awhile, since before we got married. JC has been saying he wanted to go nomatter what happened with the law because we want to be able to go and have fun and really enjoy ourselves, just us, like the honeymoon we never really had and be able to feel good about coming back and waiting out the law for several years to see what will happen. We have to "get it out of our system" if you will. JC has some relatives that may not be around much longer and I would love a chance to meet his family. We've really been looking forward to this. Meanwhile, we have been saving. We have to save for the expenses of the trip, as well as a truck to drive down there. It has always been Juan Carlos's dream to return to Mexico in a beautiful truck. He remembers seeing "northerners" come back when he was younger and thinking someday he was going to make it too. He was going to get out of poverty and achieve the "American Dream." It's hard for me to understand- I don't tend to want to put importance on material things, likely because I've never been poor. But this going to Mexico in a beautiful truck dream is all he wants in the world right now.
Well, we ended up finding this great deal for a truck for sale online. It really seemed too good to be true, but we figured people sell their cars for under their value for a thousand different reasons. Just before, JC's cousin even gave his car away cause he didn't have somewhere to keep it. It sounded like this guy was going through a rough time and needed the money more than the car. We were more than happy to take him up on a good deal. We planned a time to meet in between JC's two jobs and my work schedule. We met him half way between Lacey and Tacoma, where he said he lived- at a restaurant in Lakewood. We test drove the truck, checked it out, everything looked great. We gave him the money, he gave us the paperwork and we were good to go!
Only later, when we went to get the title transferred to our names, did the problems begin. The title had a hold on it- an ownership dispute. They told us to go get our money back. We explained it was an individual. If he didn't have a right to sell us the car, then we were in trouble. They said too bad. We tried doing more investigating. According to police, everything seemed to be in line- the names were right. The VIN wasn't stolen. No one could figure out why there was a hold on it. Soon, we got the name of an investigator, who explained the car had been totalled in Oregon several years ago and the owners now lived in AZ. When he asked me for a description of Billy, the black guy who supposedly sold us the car, he explained the real "Billy" was actually a 65 year old woman. This guy was a fake. So, who did the car really belong to? Again, no one reported the VIN as stolen so we might be able to get it titled in our names after all.
We were asked to take it in for an inspection at the VIN number inspection lane in Tacoma. I continued to worry. Juan Carlos proceeded to enjoy the truck and get pretty attached. All of his family came over to see it- everyone raved about how beautiful it was, what a good deal it was, etc. Then, on my birthday, we took it in for the inspection. We sat together and prayed in a hallway between the offices and the garage where they had us leave the car for over an hour before anyone said anything to us. They all just walked by- back and forth like we weren't there. I had chills from nervousness.
Finally, a detective walked by and casually said, "so you know this car is stolen right?" I looked up at him with big eyes, hoping he wasn't serious. "No, no, we didn't know that. No one has told us anything." "Oh yeah, well it is stolen. It was stolen from a dealership. The person who took it must have switched the VIN number out and replaced it with another one." We were in shock. "So, what does that mean? What happens now?" "Well, the car is going to stay with us. You'll have to find another ride home. Do you have someone you can call? You can call now but we'll need to get some statements before you go." All I could think was this can't be happening, this can't be happening- it was a nightmare. Everyone at the office shuffled around with no sense of urgency, no apparent concern for the fact that we had just lost all our savings, all our dreams wrapped up in that beautiful truck that we would never ride in to go to a rodeo, never cross the border in, never sleep in on the long road trip to Mexico- there it was- one second the world was ours- the next- it was gone. Just a moment, just one stupid purchase, one decision we could never take back....
Why do people do these things? I've always imagined when people talk about justice and God's justice that before God ever lets anyone into heaven that they have to feel the hurt, the pain, the worry, the suffering that their actions inflicted on others because if they were forced to face it, that would be like hell. It seems like the only real justice sometimes. I wondered in that moment, "will this guy ever know the pain and the hurt he has caused us, all for a lousy chance to make some quick cash?" We worked years for that money, we saved and we sacrificed for that money. And he would just steal it away. He would take our faith, our trust in his good intentions, in his honesty and break it into a thousand pieces and walk away.
The dealer was insured and already got paid off.... The insurance company will get their truck back to sell to the highest bidder to make a profit.... and Juan Carlos and I will start again. We'll pick up the broken pieces and try to put them back together. We'll pray for endurance, for grace, for continued blessing. We'll be thankful we can still work and that we can still dream. We will forgive and we will move on because in the face of trials like these, what else can any of us really do?
