Feeling Thankful!

So this year has been a harder year for us... I know most people think it is because of our struggle to conceive and yes, that was a big part of it! But we have also been struggling to keep our home. We had had it all planned out! Ever since we got married our plan was to purchase a home and then have kids, we wanted the best for the family we dreamed of! Well 3 and a half years ago we found our house and were so excited watching it being built! We came came out every couple weeks to see how it was coming along! We moved in in October of 2005 and decided to start working on growing our family to fill the space! Well as you know, it didn't happen right away! We never thought it would be so hard. At the start of this year we were finally told that we would not be able to conceive naturally. It was such a hard thing to hear and I had a really hard time coping. We were already struggling with our house payments because the interest rate went up and the equity in our home went down before we could refinance, like we had planned to. Knowing it was going to take a lot of $ to get pregnant we made a hard decision, to make our future family a priority. We paid our tithing first(as we should have done all along), we made the gospel a priority and cut a lot of things from our lives that were holding us back, little things that we never thought were a big deal. We also tried negotiating with our lender and they would not help us, they said "doesn't seem like you have any trouble paying", since we paid on time since we moved in. (Yep, we paid on time - paycheck to paycheck and not paying our other bills since the rate went up!) After doing all that we felt that we needed to try and sell our house. We wanted a family more than the house it would be kept in, we could make anyplace a home. We decided to put our home on the market and wait faithfully. We had our home appraised and it came in 200k lower than what we purchased for! So crazy! So we decided to do a short sale. People started coming to check out our house. In the meantime we started in-vitro and became pregnant! Such a bright spot in our life and what we were going through! We thought, "Awesome, this is worth losing our house! We made the right decision and are being blessed for it!" We got an offer on our house the middle of July and were ready to take it. Then we heard about a "short-refi" program, Seth called our lender to see what could be done in our case and he was told that our lender had closed its doors and couldn't help us with it, but we could try to do through another party! REALLY!! We couldn't believe our ears! So Seth found a loan officer who was up to date on all the current programs and he told us about an FHA loan and a bill that was passed to help give struggling home owners relief! Again, REALLY?! It is called Project Hope and you can find a lot of good info here on it, we hadn't heard of it before! He took a look at our situation and told us we were good candidates for it, so we got started with the process. THE VERY LONG PROCESS! It has been worth it though, because we just found out that we have officially closed on the new loan and are able to keep our house for 200k less then we originally purchased for! We are feeling pretty blessed at the moment, obviously and cannot believe it has worked out this way! We have felt that we need to share this with family and friends, because we know a lot of you might be in a similar situation. This year has been a hard one, but also the best one so far because it has really grown our faith. I'm not saying that only because it has worked out the best way possible for us though! We learned how to say "Thy will be done" and that made us happy even before we became pregnant and learned that we could keep our house! I know that these trials may not be the worst we will go through and I'm glad we now have the faith to make it through the future ones. The Lord and my wonderful husband have been pillars of strength through all of this and I have been able to share beautiful moments with them in prayer. I'm so thankful.

With sharing this I wanted to add the name and contact info of the loan officer who helped us, he was amazing! He specializes in new home loans, but is open to and is really good with refinancing as well. His name is Dennis Mayville and he can be reached at 858-693-5406. He knows a lot about the current market and even if you just need advice he is willing to help!

Also this is a great website with info on mortgage relief... http://www.governmentrefinanceassistance.com/