love at first sight.

It was Sunday, June 20th and we were winding down from a fabulous WALLERFEST weekend, celebrating our Wallerstedt family heritage with 100 relatives from around the country. We were delivering loaves of Mike's warm bread and passed the grand house at 315 N. Thomas. "Do you want the go in? The back door is open."

The house was in foreclosure and had sat empty for several weeks. There was no electricity but it was dusk and the sun came into the house in an enchanting way. The love affair began. We walked through the rooms and marvelled at the beauty and the potential. It drew us in. When we went home that night, I pictured us making dinner in that house instead. That night in bed, I pictured us in the front bedroom with the balcony. It was eerie, but mostly cool.

Soon it was all we could think about. We made the calls to find out which bank technically owned it. We went to the courthouse to review the records and we researched how to do the right things when purchasing a house in foreclosure.

But the most important thing we had to do was stop and pray. Our desires to purchase this house were running out of control and we could feel how the anxiety of this whole progress could consume us. It was a simple prayer, but we committed the whole thing into God's Hands. We prayed that we would stop stressing out and asked God to take over. We honestly couldn't imagine how things could even work out for us to purchase and renovate it. Our prayer was that we wanted to always be able to see and know that this was God's plan & purpose, not our scramblings. We made what we believed was a good bid - for them and for us - and we went on with our lives.