A 45 minute hail storm is more likely to make you think of a Biblical plague rather than a blessing from God, but God works for His good purpose for those who love Him in ALL things (Romans 8:28) even damaging hail storms.
We traveled to Arizona to visit my parents last month, August (boy am I far behind on blog updates). We had a great vacation which I will share in the next post, but this post is about the hail storm we experienced on Sunday evening, August 15th.
We could see the clouds coming in, but in a matter of moments the quiet skies were emptying themselves of hail in various sizes from dimes to golfballs. The size may not have been that remarkable, but the fact that the hail did not let up for at least 40 minutes is what was astonishing to us. It was so loud as it bounced off the metal roof on my parents' home. They have big windows which let you take in the beautiful surroundings of Sonoita, AZ, but these windows became targets for the hail stones.
As the storm moved in from the east, we stood at the west facing window to see the hail bounce off all 4 vehicles parked in front of the house, our minivan among them. As I stood staring at our van being pelted by chunks of ice, I wasn't worried about the van, but I did think that surely we would lose a window or two on it. Once the storm passed, I was surprised to find all windows on the vehicles were intact. The darkness, however, concealed the rest of the damage.
The next morning we were able to more closely inspect the dents on the vehicles. Our hood looked like it was covered with dimples along with the passenger side of the van, but overall we didn't think it was really that bad.
My brother works for an insurance company, so we gave him a call to get his advice on what to do next. He said it would be best if our van was paid off. Paying it off has been a goal we have been diligently working towards for months and we were so close to our goal and were going to meet it in two months.
Let me back track a moment to my last blog post in which I stated our goal was to be out of debt before we started fostering or the process of adopting. However, we felt God wanted us to go ahead and start on this journey as we continued to meet the debt-free goal. So when my brother mentioned having it paid off, Ozzie started doing the math with our pay-off amount and the money we had saved up in various emergency/Christmas accounts. Wouldn't you know that these amounts matched up almost exactly, so my wonderful, financially and technologically gifted husband transferred over all our funds to pay off the van, not knowing what to expect next.
Fast forward a couple weeks to when we have the lien released on the van, we called out the adjuster from our insurance company. Upon his arrival, he said it would just take about 10 minutes to inspect the van and give us the damage estimate. About 40 minutes later, he said that was one of the worst hail cases he had seen. He told me that in all likelihood our van was "totaled." I really was surprised to hear that, but had peace knowing we were prepared. Here is the good news part - after negotiating with the insurance company, we were blessed to receive a payout from them that is more than 3 times what we took out from all of our accounts. So we will now have a bigger emergency fund, we are out of debt, and we have some extra money for wiggle room to buy those things we'll need for having another little one in the house.
This long detailed story is really meant to share what an amazing thing that God has done. My life-verse is 2 Corinthians 2:9 which states that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. My eyes and ears have never witnessed a storm like that night and mind never conceived that God could use that storm to bring such an unexpected blessing to us. I am excited to see what else He has prepared for us!
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