We bought a car. Not exactly our first purchase in Malaysia; it has been four years and then some since we arrived, and there have been other priorities. The Lord comes first in our lives, and Pam’s ministry has been an expensive undertaking. Our children come next, and although they are grown and we are no longer paying for their post-secondary education, they have other expenses: new cars to buy, first mortgages to negotiate. All of these things come before our own needs. In fact we probably would have been happy to do without a car altogether if Pam hadn’t been injured.

It was the kind of injury that comes with age; too many groceries in too large a backpack for someone of her frame. Put that together with broken sidewalks, flood-high curbs, maniacal traffic with no respect for pedestrians and taxi drivers that were recently referred to in the local paper as “thuggish” and we reluctantly came to the conclusion that we would have to put our environmental and financial considerations aside and get some form of transportation.

We needed something with an automatic transmission so Pam could drive, something that had no rust or obvious maintenance issues that would reflect poorly on the Lord, and something that would enable us to maintain proper stewardship of the resources the Lord has committed to our care. You see the result pictured above. It is a 1996 Proton Satria. It has had four previous owners, the last being an expatriate Irishman, the boyfriend of one of the staff at the College where I teach. He seems like a reliable chap, and he has maintained the vehicle in an acceptable manner. It has a Mitsubishi 1.5 litre engine, three doors and probably a shelf life of another five years.

We are not planning any road trips any time soon. This car will get us to church and pick up a few groceries. It might also get us dancing or going for dinner again, as we have had to give that up coming here due to the uncertainty of being able to get a cab once you have gone out for the evening. We have thought about this very carefully for the last couple of years, but this does seem to be what the Lord would have us do, and we hope that it proves to be a blessing. Perhaps it might keep my darling wife a little safer on these dangerous streets than hauling groceries down treacherous sidewalks.