PAY YOUR TITHING & BE HONEST

This is a long post. Bear with me or skip it if you want to! My apologies!

July could have been an expensive month for the Hansens. Well, I guess you'd consider 3 plane tickets to Boston and a 10 day summer car rental pretty darn expensive- BUT it could have been MUCH WORSE. We have had trouble with just about everything electronic that we own.

First, Colby sucked the life out of my cell phone. Literally. He put it in his mouth when I wasn't paying attention and slobbered all over the connector part. Its more than just a cellphone- it's my dayplanner, texter, sudoku player, task list, voice memo recorder, address book, holds some cute snapshot and video clips of my kids, and my lifeline to call Cuyler when I blow out two tires (yes- two different times within two weeks- what?!?!?!) on I-15 traveling 75 miles per hour, 30+ minutes from home with both kids in the backseat of my little VW Golf! (Both tires were replaced for free by the tire place we'd bought them from.) So when I took the cell to Sprint I assumed I would have to pay for a new phone on my own since it would probably be considered "water damage". I told them truthfully what had happened. When they checked for signs of water damage inside they said there was no "official" sign of it, so they were considering it a defective phone and replaced it for free! Sweet!

Okay. The camera. I love my camera. We were fortunate to be given some money to buy a nice one when our previous one was killed by my 3 year old in February. I have guarded it with my life and there are severe consequences for anyone who messes with it (hubby included!). Anyway, I was up in Bountiful, Utah checking out a place for a family reunion a few weeks back. I took some pictures up there to show to Cuyler to see if he liked the area. That night I couldn't find the camera. I checked EVERYWHERE. I thought maybe I'd left it at a playground we stopped at on the way home from Bountiful or maybe it had slipped under one of the seats in the car and since it was dark I couldn't see it. I prayed to find it. I prayed sincerely. So the next morning I did some investigating online to find out what school playground we'd stopped at. I was in a grassy soccer field while we were there so I figured the sprinklers would have destoyed it- but I still wanted to know where I'd left it and it was in a case, which might have protected it some- but I doubted it. There were two schools right near each other and so I called each one
and each person that answered had me describe where I had been, what the playground and surrounding buildings looked like, etc. - and they each told me I needed to call the other school because it didn't sound like their school! WHAT?! I was annoyed to say the least. Neither person was helpful at all! So I called the park we'd been to. Left a message. The park host called me back and asked me what kind of camera I'd lost. I figured she was going to take my information in case it was found or turned it. After I'd described it she said, "Yup- we have it! Someone turned it in yesterday!" I started jumping up & down!!! I packed up the kids and we made the 2-hour roundtrip to get it. I couldn't believe it. So I guess I must have dropped it while loading up the kids & stroller or maybe I'd put it on the car roof while I was buckling up the kids. Who knows. I had it back and no longer had a sick-to-my-stomach feeling and I was not as "grouchy" (to put it nicely/mildly).

And lastly the computer. We had the "blue screen of death" come up on the screen one night and from the error message we deduced that it would be impossible to fix. We looked the error message up online and all the forums had comments saying we were out of luck. Maybe a PC sore could recover the data for an enourmous price tag $700 for files, $1500 for files and photos. (Boy do those places know what you want and charge a buttload for it!) But even that was questionable. Cuyler took it to work to see if the IT department might have some tricks or advice. But one of his coworker said he would look at it. And he was able to get it running!! We immediately saved EVERYTHING onto an external harddrive and vow to keep up with doing that. "You are only as good as your last backup" said Cuyler's brother Christian. How true!

So I estimate we avoided almost $3000 worth of replacements this past month. ($2000 new laptop, $300 new camera and memory card, $150 new tires, $300 cell phone). Everything fortunately fell into place. So my advice to anyone & and everyone is to pay your tithing and be honest with people (I could have said my phone "just stopped working")! We feel like we were blessed for following those principles of the gospel.