Life is still "charmed"...

I am continually amazed with the blessings Ken and I receive in our life. Seriously amazed. In June, I blogged about exactly this. It's my " Charmed Life", as Ken calls it. You can read that post here.

Ken and I are putting forth an effort to attend here...

and strive to obey this commandment...

while we continue to attend our church meetings, fulfill our callings, and argue over whose night it is to pray once we're in bed. Ha! I'm not saying we're perfect, or even headed in that direction, but rather that together we are consciously doing the things that we feel will make our relationship and marriage stronger. We involve the Lord.

Last night, Ken was called last minute to substitute at the Missionary Training Center as the organist for the fireside, which was fantastic by the way! We had already invited my parents over for dinner and so going to the MTC kind of threw a wrench into our plans. We rearranged our schedule so we could go last night. He was already asked to play on Christmas Eve and Christmas night. We're both looking forward to going then as well.

I'm so thankful that Ken is willing to share his God-given talents with those around him. We have had great spiritual experiences the two times we've been to the MTC together and are looking forward to this weekend as well.

I have a testimony that the Lord watches out for us in minor ways each day. Blessings and small miracles are all around us. Things usually seem to just "work out" somehow. Maybe not right away, but give it some time and it typically does. Charmed life, as Ken so often reminds me. We assist the Lord in whatever way is asked of us and somehow we seem to benefit in ways we wouldn't anticipate.

Like today...

Last week, Ken's car gave out and he and my dad figured out it was the battery. Long story short, the car went into the mechanics to have some work done. Nothing major... just a new battery and the posts replaced. No biggie.

The problem was that in the course of removing the battery it severed the power to the stereo. Normally this wouldn't be an issue except Ken's car has some weird anti-theft device that makes the stereo not work unless you have a key code to enter into the stereo. Well, after much searching and griping for most of Friday evening, Ken was unable to find the code he needed. He didn't have any record of it and although he remembered writing it down somewhere a few years back, he was unable to find it and quickly became very, very frustrated.

I called the Honda dealer on Saturday and scheduled an appointment for 10:00 a.m. today to get the stereo fixed. They would need 3 hours to pull out the stereo to get the serial number off the back in order to retrieve the code. 3 hours! Not to mention a fee of $120.00.

Frustrating.

But this morning I decided to try a few other options before running it over to the Honda dealer. I called the Honda customer service number and had a lovely conversation with a very helpful and kind woman. But after 10 minutes on the phone and several attempts to retrieve the code, she couldn't help me either aside from having me take it to the dealer.

As a long shot, I called a place that Ken had been to several years ago (for the same thing) to see if they, by chance, had it in the records. No such luck.

I called a mechanic who I have used in the past and trust to see how much cheaper he could do it for. It turns out he won't do any service on stereos. He won't touch them. All we needed was for someone to pull the stereo out to see something similar to this...

This mechanic gave me a few names of businesses to call that specified in car audio. So, I got on the phone to call these places. The first place I called was a car audio store in Provo called Pro Audio. When the guy answered, I told him our situation and asked if he would be able to pull the radio out to get the info off of it. He told me they could. I asked him how much they would charge for it and he said they could do it in 10 minutes and it would be free, although we could "pay" him with "festive treats" - his exact words. I was amazed! Ken and I took the car to the audio shop, and stopped on the way and picked up...

One dozen "festive treat" donuts...

Some "festive treat" brownie bites...

and a 6-pack of "festive treat" bottles of Coke.

Festive treat total came to $14.00.

The audio store pulled out the stereo, called the Honda dealer for us, gave them the stereo information, retrieved the code, entered the code into the car (and written it down for us as well) and pulled the car around. From walking in to walking out, we were there a total of 15 minutes, if that.

Now, to anyone reading this it may seem like such an insignificant thing for us to be excited about. But we are. Maybe excited isn't the right word... maybe we feel blessed. We both feel like we have such a mindful and loving Heavenly Father. Even though a car stereo would be about the last thing on His mind, we are thankful for the blessings we continue to see in our lives because of Him.