You'll Never Believe This...

Or perhaps you will. But we'll get to that in a minute.

We had a great Sunday. Enjoyed our Sunday School class about behaving yourself in The Church of God :-) then a good worship service and message by our pastor.

After church we accidentally went out with the Ridlespurges. Ha! We've been wanting to go out with them for weeks, but never seemed to get it together. But when we walked into the Mexican restaurant, there they were! :-) We really enjoy being with them. So much that we sat and talked for 3 or 4 hours! Ha! It was great. I was blessed and felt like I'd learned so much about their family. :-) And Brother Ridlespurge is gracious and defiant all at the same time (!) and insisted on treating us. What a guy. And now James still owes me a nice Mother's Day meal sometime! Ha!

When we left there, we drove past that same foreclosure we'd driven past the day before. Looked in all the same windows and had all the same thoughts: this is a real possibility. Laura was back in town but wasn't able to get in touch with the listing realtor. After all, it was Mother's Day. So we just looked in windows once more and did some more thinking and brainstorming about the possibilities.

We were only there for a few minutes, then headed on to the Washburn's house to hang out for about an hour before going back to church. The kids were thrilled to find that Sister Tammy had filled her candy machine and had a mug full of coins which to retrieve it. Doesn't seem right to be that she buys the candy AND provides the money to get it out with, but you just can't talk sense with some people. ;-)

We got to talking to the Washburns about the house we were interested in and they realized that they knew that house--they knew the people who had it built years ago! Ha! Crazy. He called the lady up and I talked to her and asked lots of questions. Still seemed like a good possibility to us, though we hadn't been inside yet.

I was so tired at church again that night. Sunday nights are always so hard for me! It's just feels like such a long day and by the time church starts, well, sitting still and being quiet is not the right thing to do if there's any hope of staying alert and coherent. Ha! Once I get up and get to moving around again I feel fine. I've been praying for God to PLEASE help me to FOCUS... and I can only believe that one of these days He's going to do it. ;-)

We actually got home at about 9:00 last night--which is an hour or two or three earlier than usual! That was sooooo nice.

This morning we got up and ready to face the day, then sort of waited on a phone call from Laura to see when she could get us in to see that house. The call came and we left here at about 10:00. We spent quite a while there, walking from room to room, checking out the crawl space, climbing up and peeking in the attic space, and thinking through and discussing all of the what-if's. I'll spare you ALL of the details, but even the short version is rather complex.

We decided to put an offer in on this house. We had originally planned on offering way under the asking price, though we feel that the property is well worth the price that's on it. You never want to pay more than you have to. ;-) But Laura told us today that with this type of foreclosure, it is either accepted or rejected--there is no counter offer. Besides that it could take 10 days or more to get an answer, during which time other people might present offers--and no doubt would on this property because it's priced so well. Besides that, they only look at one offer at a time. If they reject it, they look at the next one in the stack--you don't have a chance to make another offer. Anyway, we went to the church to hang out and wait for Laura to join us with the paperwork. We got the kids and went to the altar and had a real good prayer, asking God for wisdom and direction and for His perfect will to be done. We felt very confident about upping the amount of our offer considerably from what we'd initially thought, but still several thousand dollars under the asking price. James and I both had the same amount in our minds and just really felt like it was the right thing. Got all the papers signed and headed home so James could get online and get the pre-approval we would need to submit with our offer first thing in the morning.

We were on our way home when Laura called and said that somebody else had put an offer on the house TODAY!!! Ha!!!!! What did I tell you?!?!? This is my SUPER POWER, that's all there is to it. ;-) Laura and the listing realtor both felt that if we could get our offer submitted before 5:00 that the company would consider both offers. Of course, you have to have your pre-approval in place in order to submit an offer like this. Unfortunately it was about 4:30 when we got this phone call and we were still about 30 minutes from home! HA! I remembered my prayer at the church earlier. Along with praying about how much to offer, I prayed for God to work all of the details out if this is His will for us, and to close the doors quickly if this is not his will. Somebody else making an offer on the house today very well could be a door slamming, right?! Ha! We prayed and tried to figure out the right thing to do. We finally decided to tell Laura to go ahead and submit the offer along with a memo explaining that the pre-approval would be there by morning. Not technically the proper way to do things, but it's the best we could manage! It's one of those do-the-best-you-can-do-and-trust-the-Lord-for-His-will kind of things.

So we got home and waited to hear if Laura had, indeed, been able to get the offer in before 5:00. Last I talked to her it was about 5 minutes 'til and she was doing her best to get it completed so she could push the button! James didn't want to get the pre-approval until he KNEW that the offer made it in by 5 o'clock and would have a good chance of being viewed along with the other folks' offer. (He's been pre-approved twice before and each time they do that they check your credit--which lowers your credit score! So he didn't want to get a third pre-approval until he knew we were ready to make an offer. It's a vicious cycle. Ha!)

Finally got word from Laura at 6:00 or 7:00 that she was indeed able to get the offer in by 5:00. So James hopped online to get a quick pre-approval. HA. It was so fast and easy the last two times! But this time it was more complicated because this house is a foreclosure (makes a difference, for sure) AND because we no longer have a physical address of our own since our house sold--something that can't be worked around online. James made some phone calls, but it was a little late in the day to be able to get much help, you know?! Still, I never felt the least bit stressed about any of it. I felt good about making an offer on this house, I felt good about the price we offered, and I feel totally at peace knowing that it's in God's hands. If this is what He's got for us, He can work it out in spite of all the craziness that ensued this afternoon and evening! Ha! And if it's not what He's got for us, we don't want it. Anyway, we kept praying and asking God to direct and low-and-behold, the bank guy called James back and went through everything over the phone, and e-mailed a pre-approval letter to him immediately! So James sent it on to Laura and she sent it in to the other realtor so it will be there along with our offer first thing in the morning--when they present the other offer (and ours, Lord willing) to the whoever-they-are who owns the house.

So that's it. Our very long, very full, very exciting, very uncertain, very faith-filled day. :-) We are hoping this works out, but I really do feel perfectly resigned to the whole thing and don't think we'll be too disappointed if it doesn't. If this is what God has for us, we would be closing on the house mid-June. But the house needs lots of work before we would/could move in. With VBS and Camp and Convention packed in there then the Assembly just a few weeks later I'm guessing it would be a little while before we would actually move there. Which is fine with me. I have always hoped that we'd be able to "help" the Powells (ha! Isn't that crazy??? They are the ones who are helping us!!! They just don't seem to know it!) by staying here at least 6 months and taking care of things so they don't have to make other arrangements or worry about it. I think Assembly time is exactly 6 months. (I'm really hoping James remembered to e-mail the Powells about all of this so they won't have to learn about it here on my blog! Ha! Come to think of it, it might not be wise to let them know at all right now... Brother Powell might un-pray everything that we've been praying! HA!)

That's where it all stands. It could be a week or more before we hear anything, but at least when we do it will be a definite YES or NO. I'll keep ya' posted. :-)