God told me to move, so I'm doing it.

Following the Spirit by buying a house.

When I set out to buy a house in Woodland Hills Utah, it wasn’t really my idea. Yeah, I had thought I would “eventually” move. But frankly I thought is was a long way off.

I have been in this little grey house down the street from the Springville Museum of Art for almost 3 years. I first moved here on July 15, 2016 when Sara and I were separating from our marriage headed toward divorce. I have loved this house, it’s been a house of healing for me and for my kids. It has been filled with so many experiences that I have learned from. So many cries from pain and so may re-discovering of joys that I had lost or forgotten about. So I really wasn’t looking to move...

My little grey house

I try in my life to live so as to be in tune with what the spirit of God is telling me to do, I’m not perfect at it, but I am learning how to listen and obey more and more.

So a few months ago, I started feeling like time was approaching to look into what it would take to move. Honestly it was one of those that I usually pass of as a “yeah, I’ll get to it sometime” type of thing. Then my daughter Adrianne got married to Alex on April 5, 2019 and some of my wonderful family came up a few days early to help me and Aspen make the food for the wedding. It was so much work and I was running around so much trying to get everything done. So was everyone else, and in this little house of mine we were pretty much stepping all over each other’s toes. Obstacle coursing around each other is fine if it’s for a few hours during a family gathering, but for 4 or 5 days it gets really old. I loved having everyone here, and wouldn’t have had it any other way. But it was cramped to say the least. I realized during and after that weekend that the time to find something bigger was imenent.

Still, I felt like it was a ways off. Like, I’d wait and so something about it maybe in the fall or something. I didn’t feel like I was in a hurry to leave my home and move on that soon.

Then, one day at work I was walking to my desk, when I had that thought that I should call my mortgage guy and ask him to find out how much I could qualify on a loan. Truthfully that was not the first time I had the spirit put the thought in my head in the preceding few weeks, but the difference this time was that I felt it stronger, and I realized that I could call and leave a message even if he didn’t pick up which would get the ball rolling. In addition I realized that he already had all of my financials, so I just had to tell him that I wasn’t paying alimony any longer and he could easily pre-qualify me. My phone was right there in my pocket and his phone number was in my contacts so I woudn’t even have to look it up.

So this time instead of saying “I’ll do it when I get a chance later” I grabbed my phone and made the call, left a message and a day later he called me and we got the ball rolling.

I was excited when I was told how much I qualified for, thinking “that’s way more than I will need”.

(I hadn’t checked out the housing market yet, I had no idea how inflated it has become).

I asked him what the next step was and he told me to go find a house and put it under contract. I remember thinking “whoa! I wasn’t intending to actually look right now! This is happening awfully fast!”. (A testament to the fact that God’s time and my time are often not the same).

I figured it could’t hurt to look, so I asked my friend Steve Bond (himself being really good at dealing in real estate) who he would recommend as a realtor, and he gave me the name of Jennifer Belliston. (Excellent realtor for anyone who may be considering selling or buying a house, I highly recommend using her, she really delivers and gets the job done!) So I called and we got things going.

I went out looking at houses, after a few I found a house in Woodland Hills on Maple Drive that I fell in love with. It was perfect, other than the fact that it was in serious need of major updating that would have taken a lot of time and a lot of work and money to do. That was why I could afford it though. I loved it because it was on an acre lot in the woods, it was 5,000 square feet so lots of room for guests and kids to have fun and visit. It had a 4 car detached garage that I could have used as a separate art studio, in addition to a 3 car attached garage. So much room and a couple of sheds to store my ATV, trailer and other things. We made an offer and thought we had it, so Jennifer took myself and my kids to the house to see it.

The first Woodland Hills House I made an offer on

While we were there at the house, she got a call saying that they had put the house under contract, but not with us, with a friend of theirs instead...

I was so disappointed, I was so excited emotionally, and finding that out didn’t even seem real. I had been praying for Heavenly Father to help me find the right house for me and my family, and I also had prayed that He would not let it work out if it wasn’t meant to be. Well, here it was not working out and it was so hard because I was so totally excited. I spent the next 2 days trying to sort through my disappointment. After the 2 days I got back onto the internet and started looking again.

I found a wonderful Arrive home that was really nice, it was brand new (not even finished being built yet) and I loved the floor plan (I had looked at a lot of floor plans, so much searching existing and new houses went into this that I’m not telling about, just know that it’s about all I did after work for a long time, late into the night and up early in the morning.) I loved it so I prayed about it and didn’t receive a definite answer. So asking Heavenly Father to again hedge the way if I wasn’t supposed to have that house, I put an offer on it.

Arrive home I had under contract in Salem, UT

Arrive home I had under contract in Salem, UT

I should say too, because I didn’t earlier, that the amount I qualified for at first was not enough to buy most of the houses I was looking at. I finally had to call my mortgage guy up and ask what I needed to to in order to qualify for more. He told me that if I didn’t show any business loss on my taxes I could qualify for more. I usually take a lot of deductions for my art business because I buy a lot of things to create art. Some of my pieces sell and others don’t. So I had a loss. I had already done my taxes, but by some miracle, there was a mistake on my original filing, so the IRS rejected my taxes. While I was working on resolving the mistake (it was my mistake I not my tax guy’s) I was also working on qualifying for my mortgage. So since I had to re-file with the mistake fixed, I didn’t have to amend my taxes which made it much faster to make the adjustment. I consider that a bit of God’s hand in this process, had that not happened, it may have been a lot longer before I could get everything in line to get the loan for my house.

Still, as nice as the Arrive home was, I still wasn’t totally settled on it. I loved it, and went back and looked at it many times, trying to convinced myself that it was perfect. A few things bothered me about it. It had a small yard, no trees whatsoever, and the payment was going to be higher than I originally thought I wanted to spend. So still found myself up at night browsing houses online, So much so that I knew every listing between Springville and Payson in my price range. It actually made it faster to browse because I could list them from newest to oldest and just view the newest ones until I got to houses I recognized. We went and saw so many houses! I thought for sure that Jennifer was going to get sick of showing me houses, but she was so good and patient with me.

At the same time as this was all going on I was working on selling my house. We had 30 days to sell my house for the contract with the Arrive home. I wasn’t sure it would happen, and I kept telling Heavenly Father that it was up to Him. I rented a pod and got tons of stuff out of my house so it would look less like a “Jeff Goodsell Bachelor Pad” and more like “anyman’s home”. I even felt like I should paint the front room white since most houses now are white inside, so they look like wide open spaces, light and airy. It was a ton of work, and I have to say that my kids really helped me so much! I asked them for help, let them know how much I needed the help, and they pitched in and did a lot to help. What a blessing family is. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate my kids more than I ever have before in my life. Kids are wonderful!

My front room re-painted.

 We listed my house on Monday and but he end of the day on Tuesday we had 10 offers. We accepted one that was $20,000 above my asking price and put it under contract. I was worried that it would sell fast enough, so I left it in Heavenly Father’s hands (after I had done all that I could myself) and I will tell you, He really delivered! What a blessing. I have thanked Him many times, wow, when God goes to work, miracles happen!

We made another offer on a house that had a large pond bordering the back yard, but that didn’t pan out, and then after several weeks I was glancing at houses more and found that the Woodland Hills house that I had originally wanted was back on the market. I was so excited! I let Jen know and asked her to re-submit my offer, which she did. I was so happy. I couldn’t believe that I had another shot at that house! I thought for sure that this was the answer to my prayers and now that house would be mine. It was an excruciating 3 days waiting to hear back from the owners, and in the end when we heard back they had decided to give the same guy I lost the house to a month earlier another chance at it. His offer was even $30,000 less than mine! They must really be fond of that friend. I even wrote them a letter to submit with the offer.

That same weekend I was on Facebook and an artist friend who I follow on Facebook posted a post that said something like “come be my neighbor” and included a link to a brand new post for a different house in Woodland Hills. The house fit into my price range! So as soon as I knew the first Woodland Hills house wasn’t going to pan out, I asked my realtor to take me to see this other house. I loved it. Honestly it’s not a perfect as the first one. It doesn’t have a detached garage that I can use as a workshop, and it’s not big. But it is a good price, it’s plenty big, about 2,000 sq feet bigger than my current house if I finish the basement. And the basement has 9 foot ceilings so it won’t feel like a basement, and it has a wonderful walk-out area that I can use as my studio. It’s going to be a great. Place to do art and have family coming over. It’s on an acre of land and it’s forested! I’m so excited.

During this entire process I was praying for clarification from Heaven to know if I was choosing the right house. I have not received an overwhelming “yes” or a resounding “no” at any point, I was really frustrated with Heavenly Father at one point and was telling Him so when he told me to look up “receiving answers to prayer” on google. I did, and Elder Richard G Scott’s conference talk on receiving answer to prayer came up. I watched it on YouTube, and he said that God answers prayers by saying “Yes” or “No”. Then he explained that there is a third way he answers prayers, by allowing us to exercise faith. In other words he doesn’t give an answer and expects us to trust that He will course correct as we go. I have felt this course correction throughout this process. I have prayed often for His help to know if I am headed down a path that needed course correction. He has told me in small ways, and obvious ways. I have learned so much through this experience. God does live and He answers my prayers, in His own time and in His own way. I love Him! I love my personal relationship with Him!

-Jeff

This is the house I am buying! Look at all those beautiful TREES!