blessings from hail

I bet my title made you read it twice didn't it? I had to come up with something catchy, but it's also quite fitting. Back on October 5th we had the mother of all storms, you can read about it here. We had hail, we had wind, and it was wild and crazy and everything in between and beyond. You can view some of the damage on the above link to see what I'm talking about.

So fast forward 5 months, it is now March and the storm really hasn't given us another thought until recently when I ran into a friend while grocery shopping. I believe our running into each other at Fry's was a divine appointment. This friend lives close to our neighborhood and was telling me how they just got a new roof because of the damage caused by the storm on October 5th. I asked her some questions and got some information about it because we are in need of a new roof and it sounded like something we should look into especially since they did categorize our area as a catastrophe following this storm. This also went to explain why we have had roofing contractors showing up at our house asking to look at our roof and why so many people in our area seem to be getting a new one. Right now, I bet there are a dozen new roofs going on within walking distance of our house.

After talking to Michael about it, we made a phone call to the roofing company my friend referred us to and had them come out to do a free inspection to see if our roof took a hit during the storm as well. After Kevin (we are on a first name basis now cause he's really cool like that) inspected our roof he said we most certainly have hail and wind damage. So we filed a claim with our insurance company and scheduled an appointment to have an insurance adjuster come out to see if he would agree with Kevin's assessment. This is where the story gets good, or better I guess you could say.

Jesse, our insurance adjuster, shows up for our appointment along with his sweet wife. They are an older couple and just as sweet as can be. They work together on what's called a C.A.T. team which means they go to areas following natural distasters like floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and hail storms like what happened here in Mesa (cause that's about as exciting as our weather can get) and stay in the area until the claims have been met. Michael and I spent time talking to Jesse's wife as he and Kevin were on our roof going over the damage. It was one of those conversations that leave you so thankful you got to be in the presence of someone so special. Michael and I asked her how she and her husband got into this line of work and that is when she shared with us how they prayed for direction and asked God to show them how they can be useful to others in need and that's when He led them into this work. In the years they have done this work, they have met people in the worse of circumstances and been able to show them God's love and help them begin rebuilding after a disaster. I will just interject here that we are in no way viewing our little hail storm as disastrous, we have gone nearly 6 months with hardly even thinking twice about it and not even knowing that our roof took such a beating. But what I did learn from talking to this sweet couple is that they bless those who they come in contact with and I can see why God led them to this job.

So at the end of the appointment Jesse and Kevin get off the roof and shared with us that our roof indeed will need to be replaced due to storm damage. Do you know what this means? This means that for the cost of our homeowners deductible that we will get brand new roof! Never in a million years did we ever think we would be able to afford a new roof, and we knew the time would come where we would be forced to make this huge purchase we just didn't know how we would work that out. After taking Dave Ramsey's financial peace university two years ago, we live on a cash only basis. That means that if we don't have the cash, we don't buy it. We don't have credit cards, we have an envelope system, and we try our best to keep an emergency fun of $1,000 for unexpected repairs/expenses. And to make the story even sweeter, other parts of our house took some damage as well that we were not even aware of. Apparantly the paint on the front of our house is chipped, the pool fence has paint chip marks as well, our shed roof needs to be replaced and our mailbox has hail dents in it. We never noticed any of it! So this means that our claim amount will be even higher than just replacing the roof which means we may not even have to pay our $1,000 deductible out of pocket but can use our overhead to pay it and then decide if we really want a new mailbox or if we are cool living with our dented one, or if we want a freshly painted pool fence, etc....

All this to say we are feeling many blessings all because of hail, and wind, and a really whacked out crazy storm that happened on October 5th. We feel so undeserving, and beyond blessed. Well, I better go and pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. I can't wait to post some pictures of our brand new roof!!!!!!