WordFilled Wednesday

Our family has been deeply blessed from our friendship with a family that I have only met online. We have never gotten together, we live in separate states. We have a relationship through the same basic love of Christ. We have the same principles for our children and our marriage. I truly love being able to provide warm quilts for their children so that winters are more manageable. We once bartered a quilt for soap. That soap is still something I am using. I still have a CONTAINER full of it. It reminds me of Jesus with the fish, it just keeps going and going..I hope she will entrust her daughters quilt with me also.

Matthew 6:19-21
19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Proverbs 22:9
  A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.

Luke 6:35
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Luke 6:38
"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

A thankful heart

This is our fifth summer in our home. I love this home, it is very much like my home growing up. It has a similar floorplan. I love the character and rustic feel of it. However, a year into living here we learned it had some really horrible secrets. There was brand new baseboard that was gorgeous in the master bedroom, there was a purpose.. the major rot in the sheetrock, which over the course of time has led to crumbling huge holes. With the continual increase to our house note the past four years it leaves little money for repairs to such items. This year I decided we would try and fight things on our own, and not use a named service like we did the past two years. They had our home appraised at 185,000, after my first hearing they dropped it to 161,000 but that was still way out of our range. If I were to sell the house today I could not recover the purchase price of $116,000 without putting about $50,000 into repairs first.

Yesterday I met with the country appraiser's review board.  I listened as the county appraiser stated his facts as he knew them. When I began, voice shaking the entire time, trying to fight back tears as I spoke, I knew I had a captive audience, the Lord was working in each of their hearts. They reviewed the bid for repairs that my husband's brother in law prepared for us. They reviewed the pictures like these that I took, I had 64 of them. Some items they stated were upgrades like replacing the windows next to the fireplace that have pulled away from the home with double paned glass. That is okay my main concerns are the fireplace, bathroom and master bedroom, the windows will come in time.

When asked what the house would sell for, I stated maybe $120 but doubted that. I noticed the look in the woman's eyes as she asked the next question. Why we didn't file charges against the homeowner for non disclosed facts. My answer must have been the right one because her motion was to lower the house from $173,000 in improvements to $113,000, with the two acres of land at 12,000, that brought us to $125,000. It was all I could do to hold the waterfall of tears that would begin. It was a huge answer to prayer! Now I wait for that statement to then take it to the bank to hopefully then lower our house note the additional $400 increase that has been in place since May. It had increased $100 a year or more since we bought the home, each year. Now it will be more manageable. I pray that we are able to continue to sell quilts, get subbing jobs and that my husband can get some more side jobs to take care of some of these major issues with our home. I am truly thankful to everyone that has been praying along side us these past few months. I am thankful I trusted the Lord to help me in the pursuit of this fight. He truly granted me the desire of my heart yesterday morning.