No Trade=Good Experience

"You had a good experience, but didn't make a trade?"

Yes I did. "But how?" Just read the post...

Yesterday, I Spent a few hours going to garage sales chatting with people and talking to them about my project. I had a lot of great feedback and most people seemed pretty interested in what I was doing.

I  didn't see anything that was worth trying to trade for, but I did have a good experience with 2 of the families garage sales I stopped at.

It had to be a God thing.  I was blessed with the opportunity to share a little of what God has done in my life and how He has helped me refocus and set my priorities straight.

I also shared that God has made it possible for us to get back in church and start tithing again as well. A former job I had pretty much prevented me getting to go to church or really see my family much for about 3 years.

One of the families prayed for me too. It was one of those moments that you really felt the Peace of God moving through you. It made me feel like I was moving in the right direction with this project.

Maybe someone will come to Christ as a result of this project!

I am by no means an evangelist, or the perfect Christian, I even still struggle with things in my life. I mess up on a daily basis, sometimes I even upset my wife.

I have realized that if we are willing to ask for forgiveness, God will use you. Just open yourself up to God and say here I am Lord, use me and He will use you.

You may not even notice that He uses you. The good thing is, when we get to Heaven. we'll see how God used us to change peoples lives! Just be willing and see what happens. You don't have to have it all together, or have all the skills, just be willing. He will use you, as you are.

Mission: Accomplished

Remember the Isuzu Rodeo I spoke of? 

It's now in my driveway!! (well was... It went byebye)

All it took was my little sisters' totaled Oldsmobile, my bicycle and the Wii (I don't think the wife was very happy about me trading the Wii) In less than a week, I went from a police/fire scanner radio, to a freaking awesome 4x4 that we affectionately call "The Silver Bullet" Why you might ask? Because there are 2 bullet holes in the side of it! For real, we found a 9 mil. bullet inside the door!

I didn't ask questions, I just said thank you and proceeded home with no tag hoping that I would not get pulled over by the popo and having to explain why there were bullet holes in my car and that I did not have a tag or insurance.

 The story behind the car went like this 

This dude that was moving from North Carolina to attend college at TU had been driving all day and it was getting late so he decided to stop at a hole in the wall motel in Birmingham Alabama. As usual, places like this have some pretty shady people walking around.

Well, one of them approached the kid, some words were exchanged and next thing you know a couple of rounds were popped off. The kid took off, driving the rest of the way to TU that night.

Okay, I made all that up

 I had a moment of creativity and ran with it. The real story was, the young chap was coming from NC, and when he got to TU, somehow his battery had come loose and was resting against the engine and caught the thing on fire!

I'm not sure where the bullets came into play. Either someone was a bad shot or they are good at cleaning blood up. Being a poor college boy, he did not know what to do!   So what did he do? He had some mechanic fix it up. Long story short, the car traveled all the way to Porter, Oklahoma! Wasn't that the town they condemned because the mines were causing the town to cave in? No, wait that was Picher.

It doesn't matter, either place you go you're going to get lost, stopped by the town cop and arrested because your town football team beat theirs last week and they just don't like you. So the old country Porter boy has some mad car skills and totally fixed this 4x4 up! For the most part at least. I traded the kid the goods and went on my way. It runs great, looks great and beats driving my Saturn which I am 4 times too big to be driving. My little sister said I looked like Mr. Incredible driving the family car. It has some minor stuff to fix.

I actually ended up giving it to a friend because he needed a car. He did a little work on my van and then we called it all good in the hood.

I wish it all ended that easy

For some reason I keep trying to fix things

 I don't know how to fix

Can you see the left side of the window?

It's pretty rough. My finger went right down the side of that.

I wonder if it's because I wasn't wearing gloves?

Or that I did't have anywhere close to the right tools?

The Rodeo

Last week I was about to trade my Wii, 

and mountain bike for a SUV! 

I  nearly had the trade in my hands! It was a 1997 isuzu rodeo. It only needed a few more hours of mechanic labor and it was ready to roll. All I needed was a trailer to haul it. I never was able to find one that day, much less have the money to have it towed. And what was I thinking? I don't know how to work on cars. I guess I was going to Tim Allen it

On a better note, I did trade my police/fire/ems scanner for a polaroid portable dvd player and some old ratchet set (This was another one of those, why did I trade that moments, the scanner was too cool to have let).  Oh well, At least I have something newish to try and trade. The guitar is still up for grabs. I've had several offers, for example some elderly lady called me and very seriously offered me her stationary bike. If I wasn't so attached to my guitar, I probably would have taken it.

How did the dvd player trade go down? It was as simple as making sugar cookies. A fine young man emailed me from craigslist offering me computer games, software, and "ham radio gear" whatever that is.

I was like "check it, Matt don't do computers, what else you got?" So a long story short, I got what I already told you. The next question you might ask is, "how'd  you do the hand off?" I just picked a dark place where no one was around, a back alley usually works best. I made sure to ask my Grandma if I could barrow the Lincoln for the night because of its large trunk space.

Make sure no one is following you, because you do not want anyone to steal your new treasure. When I offered up the meeting place my trader was not down with that so we picked QT instead.

For those of you who didn't catch that I wasn't being serious 

Always meet in a well lit place with many people around and be locked and loaded just in case they try and back out of the trade (I'm kidding). We gave a description of our cars and finally found each other. THERE HE WAS, the classic computer dude, and to make things even more interesting he was an official storm chaser! Right on!

That's all I have to say for tonight. Trade on!