WE ARE HOME OWNERS!!!!!

Well folks....After 486 days of waiting, fighting, and praying- WE OWN OUR HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!

At 3:00pm Today, Nathan, I and the girls met up with our Realtor, and for the first time since this started over a year ago, were able to meet the other people who have helped with the fight to get us our house!!  We had an amazing Loan officer who not only did everything she could to get us a fantastic rate, but also prayed with us through the entire process, as well as an Attorney and Realtor who did the same! We had tons of family and friends praying for us as well!  God had given us an army of saints who rallied behind us in our time of need!!  There were LONG hours, and days, and tears, and prayers for our home and in the End, God came through EVERY TIME!!  The Lord put in my spirit from the first day we saw this house that it was ours, and we didn't stop fighting until it happened!  I am so thankful for these people who stood behind us during this long draining and discouraging process....but I pray that it helped to strengthen their faith and that they were able  to see the face of God working in our lives along the way!

I have never in my life experienced such miracles over and over, one after another before.  I've come to see that God has everything planned out for us and had his own agenda for when and how it is going to happen.  I went through a period of time the last few years where the whole world was a dark place and the presence of God in my life was really hard to find.  I would cry out to the Lord daily in the midst of that darkness but the light was always so hard to find.  God has used an amazing chain of events from our baby Joy that we lost, to the birth of our baby Vaerity, and now the whole house situation to teach me that I can not control my own life!  I HAVE to rely on Him and only Him for guidance, because He is the only one in this world who knows what they are doing!  God does so many things that are hard to understand in our lives, but if there were no suffering there would be no need for the Lord.  "His strength is made perfect in our weakness."

After our closing we drove to Steak n Shake for a Celebration dinner!  When we got home we had a surprise waiting for us!!  It was the PERFECT ending to our long journey!!  Thank you Lord for all you've done for us!!  "My God has supplied all our needs"

House update.......we are ALMOST THERE!!!

Well, the last house update was back in November.  We ended up on the news and the Senator even stepped in to help us after the house was being put up for auction.  Since then, after a ton of prayer- we finally received approval from the first mtg company; however, we could not move forward because we had to yet again get the 2nd mtg. holder to approve the sale again and it seemed like they were taking their time.

The biggest issue coming up was that our home inspection was expiring on January 10th and that would mean that we would have to pay another 450.00 to get it done again!  Our loan officer was able to get some type of extension on it but it would still cost us another 100.00!  It was obvious since yesterday was the 6th that we weren't going to be able to close by friday!

Last night before bed, I prayed and asked God to again take this over.  I asked him to please allow us to close before it expired so that we didn't have to waste anymore money!  

We received an email this morning from our loan officer stating that she re-calculated the days and our home inspection does not expire until the 16th!!!!  Then an hour ago I received another email from our attorney that the 2nd mtg. had been approved!!!  (talk about late in the midnight hour!) 

If  I've learned anything through this process it is  how important it is to have an ARMY of God's Children around us to pray for us!!  I know we had hundreds of people praying for us and our house situation and I am beyond thankful that Christ would give us so many amazing people in our lives who care so much about our well being......

We are ALMOST there!!!  Thank you LORD for answered prayers!!

Our long week, and the continuance of the house saga......

Well this week has been a complete whirl wind for our family!  Emotions have been everywhere, but our worship, and prayer life has never been better!  My last post I filled you in on the fact that we found out that our home was put into foreclosure and was now up for auction in just 24 hours!  I'm happy to report that the auction was stopped!!!  Within 24 hours our family lived out a real life story of Jericho!

Monday Nathan and I were both on the phone to lawyers, SCC, Attorney General's office and finally at the end of the day we found out the name of the Law firm that the mortgage company was using and we were able to contact them!  Monday evening Nathan and I spend our night on the couch, him playing his guitar and both of us singing praise to God.  That brought back so many memories from when we were dating- that is how we spent our date nights!  We did a lot of praying that night, asking God to intervene.  We both feel like God has given us this house and I'm not sure why but we now have to fight for it!  For years we've asked God for a larger home, and for years we have waited for this home, and for 15 months now we have been walking and praying our circles around this home, and on November 26, 2013, God said "Time to sound the horns!"

I put our my last blog post on November 25th asking if anyone had any connections to media or lawyers who would help us.  I had a friend contact me saying she had a contact to WTVR 6 news.  I emailed her contact Tuesday morning asking for help and within 15 minutes I was told I would be contacted by a reporter, and given the name of a organization to call, called H.O.M.E.  I immediately called H.O.M.E. but was given a voicemail. In the meantime our attorney was putting together a package to send out to the mortgage holders attorney to see if they would stop the foreclosure.

I received a call from Shelby Brown of Wtvr, she informed me that she had a friend who works in Senator Tim Kaine's office who used to work for H.O.M.E.  She called Paula and read her my email and I was told she was SHRIEKING after every line!!  I was given her number and told to give her a call in an hour!  When I spoke with Paula she had already started to make phone calls on our behalf to the trustees office, attorney's office, and even to the Mortgage company themselves!!

In the meantime Channel 6 new came over for an interview!  They were here for two hours yet when the clip aired there were only a few clips from what was actually said in the interview.  I guess that is how it works with all the editing.  While they were here we received word that the auction on the home had been postponed for 30 days!!!    God had done a miracle!!

Here is our first interview:
http://wtvr.com/2013/11/27/family-caught-up-in-short-sale-almost-loses-home/

I felt like they kinda tried to make us look like idiots with the comment from the other realtor, but in reality, people move into their homes early ALL THE TIME!!  We have a contract to do so, so it wasn't just a stupid decision that we made lightly!  We really prayed about it and felt like God was going to take care of things!

That night after we found out the auction was cancelled, the song from Veggie Tales popped into my head and I sang it the rest of the night:

"The Lord has given this Land to us, no need to fuss, He knows what Hes doing, we know that He will take care of us, if we will follow Him!"

Wednesday morning, I woke up with joy as the girls and I prepped the kitchen to begin making our Thanksgiving feast!  I was missing some lemons and sent Nathan to the store to pick some up when I received a phone call from WTVR Shelby Brown, asking for another interview!  I called Nathan, got everyone dressed, and took a shower and they were here within an hour!  I felt like that interview was a lot better than the first one.  I was able to talk about God and how our family had prayed that God would save our home and it was an answer to prayer.  Nathan and I talked before the interview that we knew they would edit a lot of it out but that if we did anything in those interviews we wanted to make sure the Name of God was honored!  So we both talked about God as much as we could and in each interview they has at least one blurb of me talking about how we prayed for this house, or how God answered our prayers.

After they left I went back to my cooking. (I don't have a link for the second interview yet) I cooked for 29 hours!  This would be the first Thanksgiving we ever hosted in our home!  But I tell you it was WORTH the 29 hours!  Our meal was amazing!  I wish I had taken a photo of the finished product but I didn't, here is just a peek at what it looked like though.

The day after Thanksgiving, we laid around the house and today is Sunday and I still don't think I have re-cooperated from my cook-a-thon!

Thursday evening Nathan and I hit a few stores and was home by 1am.  I began feeling upset while we were out because the memories from last year came flooding back to me.  Last year on black Friday, we left Thursday evening and ended up stopping on the way for a pregnancy test.  My test was positive!  We were beyond excited!!    A few days later I was in the ER because I began to lose the baby.  We became pregnant again just 30 days later which was a huge blessing, however I cannot forget!  I wonder if it really was a girl, or maybe that was the boy we've been wanting!  Wonder what she would have looked like, how she would have interacted with the girls, who would she have been...I didn't realize how badly it still breaks my heart till Thursday evening.  I know she is in a better place, I just wish I could have held her in my arms!

So that was our week in a nutshell.  Our fight is FAR from over!  We have 30 days to convince these banks that they need to honor our contract.  Right now we have complaints in with S.C.C, Office of Attorney General, Consumer Financial Protection Buero in Washington D.C, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.  We aren't going out without a fight because like a friend of mine reminded me "What God has given, let no man take away!"  Now that we've blown our horns and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, we have a lot of rubble to sort out!  Keep our family in your prayers as we continue through the holidays fighting this fight!

I also cannot even begin to explain to you all how humbling it is to see so many of my friends and even people I have not met so up in arms over our situation!  I'm not used to having so many people fighting for me.  I'm usually the one on the other end of that, fighting for others so it is such a blessing and so humbling to see how many people really care about us!  

Update on home: house up for auction.....

So for those of you following our house saga we haven't gotten very far with things today.  For those of you who haven't been following you can catch up by reading about it here: God's Provision and Here: Update on our house

Today we spent over eight hours making phone calls and doing research on how to stop this!  We called the SCC, the Attorney General, other Attorneys and it just felt like we were getting nowhere!  Finally our realtor found a link that took me to a docket that listed our house for AUCTION set in two days!!  We found the name of the mortgage company's attorney and Nathan gave them a call.  Our closing attorney is supposed to send them paperwork in the morning showing that we had a contract to buy this home, so we are praying that they stop the auction and realize that it would be better for them to just honor our contract!

We've contacted other Attorneys in which we would have to spend thousands of dollars to even pursue this.  We were told most people just walk away from something like this because it is like a hammer squashing a fly.

I'm just in shock I think.  I know God has a plan whether we stay here or have to leave I just wish I knew what that was because not having a home for your six children is a great way to make you feel like a complete failure in every way!  My stomach is in knots all day long, I cannot think straight!  It's hard to function normally and go on like things are going to be okay!  Our kids want to put up the Christmas tree but how do we do that when we don't know if we will be taking it down the next day!  How do I just go on the next few days and keep things normal for my kids so that they do not worry!  How did any of this even happen!  I'm in desperate need of your prayers, and any contacts anyone has in the media, or with attorneys would also be so helpful!

God's provision.....

They say that patience is a virtue, but that is one area of my life I've never been good at ESPECIALLY while pregnant!!  I actually recall a conversation once I had in one of my early pregnancies; I was huge, miserable, and ready for it to be over and someone said to me "I guess God is teaching you patience!"  Well the normal me would have smiled and walked on the hormonal me came out instead and replied, "God doesn't teach pregnant women patience, He knows better!"  While we laughed about my unexpected response (I didn't even expect it) it became something God would later use to prove me wrong!

When Nathan and I got married we purchased a 3 bedroom 2 bath rancher.  We never dreamed that we would have so many children to fill it up with!  While he had about two children in mind, I knew I wanted a large family but never imagined that the definition of large was over four.  Over the 10 years we've been together and talked about our expectations for our family and future our views on what a blessing Children are, birth control, and trusting God began to change and develop into something we would have never imagined.  Never once have we ever had a conversation in our ten years that went anything like, "lets have six children!!"  It began with one, then unexpectedly we were expecting the second and then God began to change our hearts to want what he wanted for us and not just what we wanted for us.  So needless to say our home has filled up quickly!

After the third baby I began praying that God would bless us with a larger home.  For over five years I have prayed that if God wants us to have many children he would supply us with our need for a larger home.  I didn't want anything fancy just something that we could fit in comfortably, expand our family if it was God's will, and have room for homeschooling (which we believe we were called to do as well).  Once we had baby #4 I began to agonize over this home that did not look like was in our future!  I HATED our home, I could not stand to be here, it was suffocating and embarrassing that we were all shoved in here, and I couldn't invite people over because we had no where for them to sit!  Finally after four years of praying for a larger home the economy took a dive and the housing market went down with it.  We began our search to find a larger home for the same price we bought our rancher for and rent out our current home.

We looked at several homes but nothing that would really fit us.  I began looking for something around the same size as what we already had but with 4 bedrooms and a dinning room.  I didn't want anything huge just something that worked.  We quickly realized that we would soon be in the same situation as we are in now if we upgraded to only 500sq ft.  and had to look at larger homes over 2000sq ft.  Nathan would ask me "how will we know when it's the right one?"   I'd tell him "we will just know!"   We found a really nice white house that we liked, we had a few reservations about it but overall we liked it and it would fit us and fit our price range.  We put a contract on it and it was verbally accepted then 30 minutes later we received a call that they received a better offer and was going to go with that one!  We were heartbroken and I almost didn't want to look anymore!  But we kept on.  FINALLY we found the one!  It was over 2200 sq. ft, 4 bedroom, 3 bathrooms, fireplace, dining room, play room, fenced in back yard, and in a culdesac, so the kids can finally learn to ride bikes!!  It was perfect for us!  As we walked around the back yard I prayed and asked God if this was the one, and a figure came into my mind as to what to offer on the house!  The amount I felt we should offer was 20,000 less than the asking price, and 43,000 less than the assessment price of the home!  Once we found out the home was a short-sale and was owned by Indy Mac/ One West we really were hesitant it would go through.  Indy Mac/One West is known for not approving short-sales because they make more money on forclosures sense they are backed by the government.  After a three month wait we were told by BOTH selling and listing agents that they did not believe this short-sale would ever happen!

I had such peace about that house, I just knew it was the right house and could not let go of it!  So we kept our contract on that house (although it was outdated) and kept looking just in case.  We came across another home we loved and put a contract on that one.  It was beautiful but had a lot of water issues in the yard; we ended up not getting that one.  After that we had decided to give up on the house for a while.  I was so stressed at the time, being almost in my second trimester of pregnancy with baby #6, that I couldn't handle all the stress from it all.  We decided to still look at what came on the market but unless it had everything we wanted we wouldn't go see it.  We were not settling.  Mean-while, I was praying and praying for the other house to somehow come through!!  We had so many set backs with it but finally in May we received a call that they would approve and close on the home within 45 days!!  We renewed our paperwork and waited, and waited, and waited and heard NOTHING!

In the meantime I prayed, and prayed and prayed!!  We realized that if we didn't find a home before the end of the year we would have to wait several more years before we started the process again so this was the end of the line for us!  I began to understand the meaning of giving things over to God!  I would get so stressed and have to pray and ask God to take it from me, and my burdens were lifted!  I realized that there was no need in worrying about things because this house belonged to God and it was up to him if He gave it to us or not, not the bank!  So I began to pray differently and think about things differently.  I realized that our home we are in now was given to us by God as well.  Why would he give me another if I didn't appreciate the one I had and hated it so badly?!  so I began to organize our home and make things more comfortable for all of us to fit here.  It gave us so much more room and comfort that I began to really love my home!  I actually began to pray and thank God for this home!!  My prayers changed from "please I can't stand living here anymore Lord I'm drowning!"  to " thank you Lord for this house you have blessed our family with, thank you for giving us shelter and the ability to make it comfortable for all of us who live here."  I also told God that I knew the other house belonged to Him and if it was His will please bless us with it.  Once I finally realized the house belonged to God and not the bank, it made being patient (even while pregnant) so much easier!

We got word they were doing an assessment on the home to see how much they should sell it for.  I began to get nervous because I couldn't see how they would ever sell that home to us for the price we offered  (only 10k more than we paid for our rancher but 1242 more sq ft.) especially after seeing what the homes around it were worth and the house market had started to go up again.  One day we were out and about and the kids all fell asleep in the car (which is rare for all of them)!  We decided to take a drive and let them nap a while.  Nathan told me he wanted me to go over by the new home so he could pray over it and claim it as ours.  He said when Jerry Falwell wanted to buy the land for Liberty University he walked the mountain prayed over it and claimed it as his!  Now he has one of the largest Christian Universities there in the world!  So we did just that.  We stopped by the house and Nathan walked around the home and prayed and asked God to bless us and claimed it in Jesus Name for our family.

After two weeks of hearing nothing more; I became weary.  There were many things I have been praying about for many weeks (not just the house) that had began wearing on me; not to mention I was STILL pregnant!!  One night I just could not sleep so I got on my knees in my living room and began worshiping God.  For over an hour I sang praises to Him and just sat in his presence.  Finally I began praying, first thanking him again for our home, reminding him that his word says, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find" and then reminding him how long I've been asking and seeking and that I was weary!!  I needed a breakthrough!

Finally the end of August (2 days after my prayer) after almost a year wait, we got word they had approved our short-sale!  Not only had they approved our short- sale but they did not even try to up the price, we got it for the price God had showed us to ask!  Not only was I extremely excited but I felt so unworthy that God blessed us in such an amazing way!  I knew if it was God's will it would happen but maybe I just never felt it was God's will to bless us?!

We are finally in the process of closing on our home.  We have all the paperwork in order and inspection scheduled.  It does not seem real to me that we are finally moving, but I will never take that home for-granted that is for sure!  I've never been more thankful to God for showing us that He is faithful to provide all our needs!  Now if I can convince Him to let me go into labor I'll be on top of the world ;)

Memories...

This week has been a bit emotional for me.  I've tried my hardest not to think about the house and count down the days that the bank has received our newest offer, however; every decision I seem to be making has to revolve around "the house."  I feel at a total standstill yet again, waiting on approval from the bank to go through.  We cannot improve our current home because (1) we need to save every penny we can for moving if it happens and (2) if we rent it out we would do things differently than if we stayed here.  We cannot pack up because we do not know for sure if things will pan out like we hope, and so for now we are just in limbo...waiting.

I have a friend who recently had sold their home and bought another.  Their previous home they had brought all their children home to and made memories in it, however; it was to be burnt to the ground in order to build on the property.  I saw her photos she posted on facebook about it and read all her statuses on how devastated she was to watch their home burn to the ground.  The other night I had a dream that we got the house!  I was a bit sad we were leaving our little rancher that we've brought all our children home to but was ready to make new memories in our new home.  Then I look up and see my friend sitting in her car watching her home.  It was not all the way burnt down like what happened in real life but, the fire was out, and the house was still standing.  You could see it had been in a fire, but the house remained.  My friend just sat there watching her home; tears streaming down her face.  I remember thinking in my dream, "wonder if she is sad it was burnt or happy it is still there."  As I thought about this dream over and over again, it finally started to make sense to me.  Just because the house had been on fire and burnt to the ground doesn't mean the memories will not stand.  We (and she) will always have amazing memories of our families in our old homes.

Tonight when the kids went to bed Nathan and I sat on the porch and enjoyed the 70 degree weather.  We talked about our fears, dreams, hopes, and memories.  We talked about how many neighbors in the houses around us we have seen come and go in the last eight years we've been here.  I told him I feel so stuck right now with not having an answer on the house.  I would be happy in our small house if they say no, but a little disappointed as well.  Then I realized that the first thing I had thought of when we got the news was other family members who need a larger home as well.  How I wanted them to have the house we were getting, how they deserve it more, need it just as badly.  I told Nathan that I just don't feel that I deserve to have that home.  He told me "Toneka, you have prayed for that home for eight years!  God knows the desires of your heart!"  It took all I had to hold back my tears.  I told him about how I just thought it was not coincidental that our neighbors at the new home also had six children and homeschooled.  I had prayed also so many times to be able to be close to a woman with a large family, who homeschooled so I can see how they do things and learn how to be a better mother and teacher for my children.  And he said, "and it's not a mistake, God knows the desires of your heart!"

So, while I feel content either way, I still feel on edge because I cannot move forward with life at this moment.  I'm so thankful that God has even given us this opportunity and has even allowed us to consider another home as an option.  I've just been praying that if it's God's will it will all work out smoothly from the bank approval, to financing, finding a renter for our current home and closing.  Keep your prayers coming!!