When things go right...

We took a leap of faith this year.

I quit my very well-paying job in August of last year to attempt a new business (ad)venture.  Despite the looming threat of a recession, we felt (for a number of reasons) that it was the right time to leave Healthcare One.  Unfortunately, my business prospects all began to fall away, and by December we had depleted all our emergency savings.  We were completely broke, and couldn't even pay our mortgage.

We decided to sell the house and look for a cheap rent situation.  We talked about our options as a family, and together we decided that since we had no business prospects of any significance tying us to Fairport any more, that the time had come to move away from New York.  

All of our extended family lives in the western states.  From New York, it takes either 2 days of non-stop driving, or expensive airplane tickets to visit them, and so for these 11 years we have been largely unable to go to graduations, birthdays, holidays, weddings, baptisms or other family events.  

We decided to move west.

So I started looking for job opportunities in Colorado and Utah.  I submitted dozens of job applications for positions advertised on jobs.com, careerbuilder.com, monster.com and others.  I also submitted several applications for LDS church and BYU listed positions.  After Christmas, I had still not gotten any positive response from any of my job applications.  Things looked bleak.

But we didn't get discouraged.  We had prayed individually and as a family to know what we should do to make it through the tough times we were facing, and every one of us received the same answer - move west to be closer to family, and things will work out.

So we took a leap of faith.  I bought a plane ticket to Utah.  My objective was to find a job, and then find a place to rent to move my family into.  I arrived on January 2nd, had an interview on January 3rd at BYU, and began working a part-time job there on January 9th.  

I also submitted my resume to local job placement agencies.  In early February I was placed into a full-time position at a software company which had a temporary need for additional programmers.  I was making $40/hour, and putting in about 50 hours per week.

After about 5 weeks of that, I was contacted by a company in Salt Lake that I had submitted my resume to via careerbuilder.com a couple of months previously.  They interviewed me, and then offered me an $85,000 salary and great benefits to be a Mid-level software engineer for them.  I accepted at the end of March and started work on the 6th of April - a very significant day.

That's 3 jobs in 3 months in an economic recession.  I attribute that to the Lord's blessings in response to our leap of faith and trusting the answer that He had given to our prayers.

But the blessings did not stop there.  The housing market was affected differently in different parts of the country.  For example, in Fairport, NY there was little change in the housing market.  Home values, which had been appreciating steadily over the years, fell back only slightly, making them about what they were the previous year.  In Utah, however, the housing market fell substantially, making it so that almost every house on the market is a short-sale, or a foreclosed, bank-owned sale,  Homes that last year cost $400,ooo are now selling for $250,000 or less.

What this means for us is that we are able to get a fair equity return on our 4 bedroom home in Fairport, and with the low interest rates and low prices in Utah, we are able to turn right around and buy a larger 5 bedroom home in Utah without really affecting our budget.  We will, in fact, close on a 5-year-old 5 bedroom home in Eagle Mountain later this month.  And in mid June we close on the sale of our Fairport house.

We had planned to rent a small apartment, but for the same amount of monthly expense we will be in a nearly-new comfortable and spacious home with a large yard.   Everything has been falling into place for us.  Better job, better pay, better benefits, larger home, larger yard, and best of all, we are close enough to participate in special family occasions.  Many people are struggling in this economy.  Still many others are managing to maintain their lives somewhat unaffected by it.  But how many are being upgraded?

Now I'm not so naive as to believe that prayer and faith will always result in financial increase, nor am I suggesting that the answers to your prayers will always be to your liking.  But I do believe that when we place our trust in God and go forward with faith following the answers that we receive to our prayers,  things will eventually work out for our benefit despite the hardships we will endure.  In the end, I believe we will see, if we look honestly, that we are better when we accept with faith and gratitude whatever plan the Lord has for our lives.

Thank you, Heavenly Father.