I really truly thought I was ready for it, and ready to live the life of mac n' cheese and ramen. Well, turns out we were more poor while both attending school than either of us had anticipated. On top of that, Joe got a couple kidney stones, which ended up in Hospital/ER bills totaling just under $10,000. He had to get some surgery/radiology thing done to one of them to break it up into a lot of little kidney stones instead of one huge one, so it could pass. I had some weird medical stuff also going on which landed me in the ER one morning (ended up just being a really bad kidney infection - go figure), and the bill for that was over $700.
We were barely paying basic bills as it was, then the medical bills started pouring in. We decided to go talk to the financial assistance people at the hospital to see what type of payment plan we could set up. We filled out a bunch of paperwork, gave them our most recent check stubs, and waited to hear back from them. A few weeks later, we got a letter in the mail from the hospital. I was praying that they had set something up to where we only had to pay a little each month (probably for the next 50 years) until it was all paid off... but it said something even better:
"Dear William Joseph Rawlings, After careful consideration of the information you provided, we are happy to inform you that we will adjust your balance from $9,890 to a total of $200..."
Yes, that's right, it went from almost $10K to two hundred dollars! I kept reading it over and over again to see if I was missing something, but I wasn't. A few months later the reply to my request came back, and we ended up having to pay only $50 for it. Mine went from $700, to $50... crazy. I don't know what kind of government program, Healthcare assistance program, or whatever else it was that helped us out with this, but I have never been so grateful for anything in my entire life. Oh but wait, the blessings keep coming...
The past couple months I decided to apply for every scholarship there was available to me, because I have been doing surprisingly well (very surprisingly for me) in school. One of them I had to interview for. They chose 7 people to interview out of all the applicants, then out of those 7 they chose 3 to award the scholarships to. I ended up getting it, plus an academic scholarship, plus a housing scholarship that lasts until Spring semester next year (we didn't even know these existed until we looked into it, but they pay for your rent... completely!). No rent for the next year, and $1000 towards tuition each semester. I don't know if anyone else could understand the stress that was lifted off of us because of this. We had been struggling financially since we moved here (more so than we thought we would), wondering how we were going to pay for school, and everything else, while both of us were just working part-time at the University. We prayed about whether one of us should take a semester off and just work, or if we should move back to American Fork and work for a while then come back to school, but we both knew that school was where we were both supposed to be.
This has been such a growing experience for us in every way. We have grown so much closer to each other, and our testimonies have grown even more. We knew our prayers would be answered, but just didn't know how. They were answered in every way, shape, and form. I guess someone up there knows what He is doing :o)
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