Mark and I have discussed from the beginning about moving to San Antonio. His family is all located in Texas, all within about a 3 hour drive from San Antonio. Mark’s company has a small division in San Antonio, and the government contract work that he does is strong in that city. We thought we would look into moving after we had been married for about 5 years, but boy were we wrong. God lead us to San Antonio quite earlier than we expected.
In October 2011 we received information from Mark’s director at work that a position had opened up in the San Antonio Tx office on a different project. We began to heavily think and pray about the opportunity ultimately leading to us saying Mark was interested in applying for the job. His name was submitted.
At the beginning of November 2011 Mark received a call asking for a phone interview. He set up his interview for the same weekend we were traveling to Washington for my Grandpa’s funeral. Mark took the call and proceeded to do his phone interview. After the interview was over Mark felt as though he didn’t do well at all and was very discouraged. No less than an hour later we were walking out of my parent’s house when Mark got another call. They wanted to bring him to Texas for another interview! What an emotional roller coaster we were on that day. Going from being bummed, to actually thinking we have a shot at getting this work transfer.
A few weeks later he got his interview set up for the Friday before Thanksgiving. Mark took off Thursday to try and get a feel for the city. He interviewed Friday and really liked the office. The manager really liked him as well and was offered the job on the spot. We were going to Houston for Thanksgiving, so Mark’s parents were nice enough to take us to San Antonio for an overnight trip so I could see the city. We went to the Lighting of the River Walk with the holiday lights, and stayed in a hotel downtown. The next morning we got up and went to the north part of the city to see some places we thought we would be interested in living. I have to be honest, San Antonio was different than I expected. Its “Green”, but not green like I was expecting. Being from Washington, the biggest thing I missed while living in AZ was all the colors of green on the trees.
The waiting game now began. We waited for about a month to get the actual written offer from his Company. We began getting our house ready to go on the market. The offer came back different than we expected (no closing costs on the sale of our house), so we pushed back, and began to wait again. It took another 3 or 4 weeks to hear back another offer which included what amounted to 50% closing costs. We got the green light to go. It was time to put our house on the market.
Before we heard back from the company on the second offer we began to really evaluate if we wanted to move, and what sacrifice were willing to make financially to go. We knew that there was a great chance that we would have to pay to get out of our house, and that we actually wouldn’t get any selling assistance at all. About a week before we got the second offer back we both decided that we felt that God was directing us to San Antonio, and to not worry about the cost.
Well, we selected our realtor and began working towards a go live date on our house. We packed up what seemed to be half the house, cleaned out the closets, and cleaned and re-cleaned the kitchen and floors. I don’t think our house had ever been that clean! The day before the house went on the market, the realtor had lined up a photographer to come take pictures of the house. We were ready to go! Well, whatever happened is still a mystery, but the realtor said that it was too cloudy and we couldn’t take pictures today (I think he honestly forgot to schedule the photographer so he wasn’t originally going to come). We were faced with the decision: GO live with listing the house (and take pictures the next week), or wait another week? We decided that it was a big opportunity for God to show us he is here for us and we went for it. The house went live on Thursday February 9th.
Well, I can honestly say the sell of our house was a God thing. We listed Thursday and had 1 showing. Friday we had something like 6 or 7 showings (one of those being a double showing to the same couple), Saturday was the same, as well as Sunday. Saturday afternoon we were headed down to Desert Ridge (an outdoor mall) with the dogs. We received a call from one of the people that had viewed the house earlier that day asking to see it again, and that they wanted to put an offer on the ! Always a good sign when they want to go back! We then received a call from our Realtor saying he had an offer on the house. It was a really strong offer, and had us really excited, but we knew another offer was going to come in. Well, we waited for a second offer to come in, and it was even better than the first!!! The offer was above asking price, and we didn’t have to pay any extra closing costs (typical in the housing market today). We went with the second offer and were on our way!
The inspection came the following Wednesday, and we got the results back Sunday. We had termites (which is extremely common in Az). We got a quote from the termite inspection company saying they could fix the problem for about half the price of other companies. We will use them to fix it. The major miracle from the inspection, is that they only asked for us to fix about half of what came up on the report! We agreed to everything and asked for them to order the appraisal.
The appraisal came and we waited a little over a week for the results. We were slightly concerned about the appraisal because the house 2 doors down appraised for 50K less than what we were under contract for. Well, God pulled out another miracle! Our appraisal came back and it was for $2,000 above what we were under contract for!!! Praise God!
We are now getting ready to head to San Antonio to find an Apt. We are believing for God to provide an apt that is big enough for us and all our stuff, and is affordable so we can save for a new house! God sure is showing us that he wants us in Texas… We are interested to see what he is going to do through us there!
Sorry for the long post! You have to hear the details to really understand all the miracles God has provided us to get to Texas. Check back every once in a while. We will try to keep up and keep you updated on what is going on in our lives J
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