Why Do These Things Get Me So Giddy?

Christmas is coming!!!

With An Open Heart

Philippians 3:10

"I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised Him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in His death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!"

I'm having a breakthrough - And this only (and always) happens through suffering and challenge. My broken heart will lead me to bent knees. My emptiness will guide me to the only thing that can satisfy. Lord, thank you for hard times. Thank you for struggle. Thank you for silence and desperation. I need that. I am growing. You have a plan. You have my attention and heart. I can't live without you.

Forgive me please for my selfishness, my resistance to change, my "victim" attitude, my hopeless heart, my paralysis, my temper tantrums, my need to feel loved and approved by everyone, my addiction to worry, my paradoxical lifestyle, my half-assed effort, my lack of faith, my judgmental heart, my lack of compassion, my gluttony, my pride...

You must refine me with fire. I want to come forth as gold. Your love is better than life.

Off to Strawberry

Strawberry, Arizona that is...

I'm off this weekend for a Global Trip Leaders Training Retreat. I'll be going through an intense training to prepare me to take a group of teens to Africa this next summer. Crazy, I know. Our church has focussed mainly on helping North East Africa and the Muslim people. We have many Muslim refugees we help here in AZ, and so that has become our focussed mission as a church, to bring these people hope and love. We also have a ministry to children suffering from AIDs. I do not know which focus will be my trip, but I'm excited for this opportunity. There has been talk about flying into Cairo so we can see the Egyptian pyramids - so fun! I'll be sure to be blogging more as things come together.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

We have a house! The owner accepted our addendum and as far as I know (you never know, right?) we are homeowners!!! Yay!!! I still can't believe it! We are set to close on or before September 17th. :)

House Update

Oh how naive I was going into this house buying experience! I really thought that you looked at houses, picked the one you liked, made an offer, the seller accepts, and you move in! Not so much, but this has been an incredible learning experience. I mean, where else would I learn about the terms "PMI" or "Seasoning" or "FHA loan" or "Comps". A month ago that wouldn't have meant anything to me.

Here's where we're at... (I feel bad that all of my blogs are only about the house right now)

Basically the owner did not do his own 2nd appraisal. Our loan guy has been working with the owner and they went back to the appraisal company (most reputable appraisal company in AZ supposedly) to have them do a more in-depth and extensive look at the house. Our realtor said that we're now getting the most accurate appraisal of any of his clients. I guess in the first appraisal some comps were missing which brought that price down pretty low. It's really hard to get an accurate amount since some are selling as short sales and foreclosures.

Jake and I decided to do one last offer with the seller paying the closing costs since we have to put down 10% for our conventional loan (couldn't get an FHA).

The seller came back with a counter. He bought a house across the street that was in foreclosure that he wants to flip and wants another good comp in the neighborhood, so he's asking for $3K more than the appraisal but he's offering us a $3500 incentive to go towards things like a new fridge and paying for a year's worth of HOA fees and stuff. This is probably pretty good for us because if he sells that other house for about the same or more, the value of our house goes up. We had to find out if this was even legal, as he's trying to up the value of the house and give us a kick back. What our realtor is doing is drawing up a page for the house where the seller agrees to buy us certain things for the house or pay for certain fees that we would have to pay that all end up totaling $3500, which makes it legal. So we've been looking at fridges online and stuff.

With all of that house mumbo jumbo said. We're taking the offer and signing an addendum today. We're hoping to close by Sept. 17th.

I can't believe we could actually own this house! It's amazing! I love it love it love it. And it's so much better to put money toward equity (like a savings account for the future) than to throw it away on rent for someone else's mortgage. We're hoping that one day we can sell it so that we can be back in SoCal with our kids (woops, did I say kids?). :) But if we end up "stuck in AZ", at least we're in our dream house there. We wouldn't mind being stuck there at all. And... you would love visiting - I promise. It's really a charming community.

Anyway, that's it I guess. Thank you so much family and friends for your love and support.

I Got A Promotion!

Starting today you're looking at the new Student Ministries Campus Pastor on the Gilbert Campus at Central - in charge of all of the youth pastors on my campus. I feel so blessed to get to lead in this way. This is what makes my heart sing. When God brought us here, I had no idea how much He would bless us.

No Good Words (only Bad ones) :)

Another unsurprising update... the sellers are TICKED at the results of the appraisal and are having us sign another 5 day (delay) addendum so that they can get their own appraisal. Supposedly our appraiser missed some comps that were in a higher range of sales. Can I just say, this is not fun. Dream house has a whole new meaning. We're trying to be patient and pretty ready to chek out other options.