Unforseen Blessings

Day 10 - On Wednesday Fred wrote a good post about a blessing we received this week. Unfortunately with our internet problem, his got deleted so you'll have to put up with my rendition of the story. As you are probably aware, our AC has been broken and because Maryland doesn't know the meaning of temperate weather, we've been sweating out the last two months ever since the snow melted. Following General Conference and Easter Weekend, we decided to get the AC fixed so I called around to see who would give us a free estimate so we could budget for it. Unfortunately, the whole ordeal turned out to be one problem after another. First, we had a guy come out and look at it. He said he thought it would be a simple fix but he didn't have the tools for it so he would have his friend come. Fred called the friend but he didn't return phone calls. Then when Fred did get a hold of him, they set up a time for the guy to come and he never showed up. Fred tried calling again for a couple of days without results. We called the original man who got in touch with his friend and nearly two weeks later he came out to the house. While he was here he charged us to look at the unit and then told us we had to either replace the compressor for $1500 or the whole unit for $3700. Blah. Fred wasn't here at the time so I obviously told him we needed to talk it over. Fred wanted to get a second opinion, so when we were talking to the man who is re-doing our kitchen, he told us he has a friend who also does AC work. His name is Willie. He came out to the house and looked at everything, said he could replace the compressor for $1500 or a new unit for $2700. Since our AC unit is over 20 years old and we don't want to sell a lemon to someone in two years, Fred and I were leaning towards changing the whole unit. Fred did some research, found some units, and then sent the information to Willie. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Fred called, emailed, called again and we didn't get any response. What's the deal with people not answering phones! (Like I can talk.) Anyway, we talked to our kitchen man again, (his name is Juan) and he said that he'd call Willie for us. By the end of the next day, he said he was worried about Willie because he always answers his phone or returns phone calls right away and Juan hadn't heard back. But Juan's brother-in-law also does AC work, so he gave us Ryan's phone number. Fred called Ryan who was prompt to reply, set up a time to come out and look at our unit, AND showed up. This was on Wednesday. He looked at everything and said there was something wrong with the starter thing (I'm not real sure what was wrong) and he could fix it for us that night for $350. Which is exactly what he did! So now our AC works just fine, and for a very small fraction of what we thought it was going to cost. Fred's thoughts on this: It pays to pay your tithing. Malachi said the blessings of heaven would be poured out upon us, and facing a hot and humid summer, this is a pretty huge blessing indeed.