At the end of May 2022, after 9 months in the Church’s preservice program for seminary teachers, Ben got a call that would change our lives.
“You’ve been hired to teach seminary full time,” he was told, “and it’s going to be in Arizona.”
Neither Ben or I had ever actually been to Arizona before so this came as a bit of a shock, as you can imagine.
Later that day we found out he would be teaching in a town called Waddell near the larger city of Surprise. This felt quite fitting considering what a big surprise this move was for us and our friends and family used every possibility they could to make jokes about it.
The night that we found out we would be moving to Surprise, Ben suggested we watch some YouTube videos of the area so that we could better imagine it. The first video we watched toured a few of the communities around town. Marley Park was briefly mentioned, but after the video it was the area that had stood out to both of us.
We did more research, I talked to the bishop and relief society president of the ward, and was completely sold. We felt such a strong pull to Marley Park and knew that’s where we needed to be.
There were very few homes for sale at the time, though, and our time was running short before we needed to move. We made a couple of offers that didn’t work out and then there were simply no more homes available. We ended up making an offer on a home in another part of town that was accepted and we began to move forward with that. My heart was still in Marley Park though and something about buying this home didn’t feel quite right.
Fast forward a bit and the sale of our home in St. George fell through twice- coinciding with the purchase of our home in Surprise falling through.
We were supposed to be moving a week and a half later. So, we prayed. And felt like we needed to rent for a year. This brought so much peace and we once again started looking in Marley Park. This time for a rental. Once again nothing was working out. There was literally one home available and the owners weren’t responding to us. I started to feel like a stalker with how desperately I was trying to get a hold of these people.
That week I listened to part of President Nelson’s talk about seeking and expecting miracles. He said, “the Lord will bless you with miracles if you believe in Him, “doubting nothing.”23 Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith. I promise that you can experience for yourself that Jesus Christ “giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.”24 Few things will accelerate your spiritual momentum more than realizing the Lord is helping you to move a mountain in your life.” This felt like a mountain in our lives and I decided to pray every day about this house– asking for a miracle to occur if it was God’s will. Ben and I were going to Arizona the next week for a seminary convention and would have just a few hours in Surprise to look at homes. We booked out our morning with as many as we could squeeze in. Still nothing from Marley Park. We were walking through our second potential home when Ben got a text from the Marley Park homeowner I had been desperately trying to reach out to. It took everything in us to keep our composure together in front of the realtor showing us the other home. We finished walking through the house and rushed to the car and completely lost our cool composure as we read her message saying something along the lines of “Sorry I’ve been out of town, but yes you can come and see the house”
We drove over right away and by nothing short of a miracle her husband was off of work that day and was able to meet us right then. The moment we parked in front of the house we knew. This was exactly where we were meant to be. The feeling of that street & neighborhood compared to the many others we had been to was tangibly different. It actually brought me to tears. It was home. We walked through the house & told him we would take it !!
He must have thought we were out of our minds with how excited we were. He had no idea I had been praying about this house for weeks. Ironically, this house was a little older and needed a little bit of love. The houses we toured all morning were brand new, but the feeling was so different. There was just no doubt this is where we need to be and we both felt it.
That night we signed the lease!!! There are so many more little details that I could share that make me just KNOW that my prayers were answered. This WAS a miracle and nothing short of it! I have no doubt that God answered my prayers. The prayers I prayed in faith following the counsel from our dear Prophet to seek and expect miracles.
I know that our prayers are not always answered so specifically. President Nelson, speaking of individuals in the scriptures who received miracles, said, “Each of these miracles took time and may not have been exactly what those individuals originally requested from the Lord.”
But if there is anything that this experience has taught me it is that God DOES hear our prayers. And that He IS a God of miracles. He cares about the things that we care about because He cares about us.
