Anyway, I thought I'd update on you what we finally did about our kitchen. I ended up getting some scholarship money that showed up late, and they sent me all of it at the same time when I expected only to get half of it for this semester. Altogether, I got $1500. We'd been needing to replace the washer and dyer for some time, as they weren't working well, and of course we had the cooktop to replace, as well as some repairs on the van. So we praised God for His provision.
For our kitchen, we looked at cragislist and found a guy who was selling a cooktop as well as a wall oven for $20. That seemed like a good idea, since we weren't sure how long our oven would last anyway. So Erick went and bought them. As he was driving away, the man pulled up behind him at the next stop and got out and handed him back his $20 bill and told him to keep it. So we ended up getting them both for free!
We put the oven in the garage for now. No point in replacing it just yet, but it's there if we need it. The cooktop was only a 30", but since we didn't need to buy one, we used some of the money we'd saved out for it to replace the countertops. That way we could just cut a smaller hole for a smaller cooktop. The new countertops are black and set off the golden wood paneling very nicely in our kitchen.
We bought a nice used washer and dryer set, and they work well. Our van is also running nicely now, and we even have money leftover for Christmas presents. God is so good to us!
