college!

Now that my second eldest daughter is enrolled in the private school that we had prayed for, for so long, we are able to turn our attention to our eldest daughter.

The first night home from the hospital when our sweetie was diagnosed was the night that my eldest applied to this college. I remember dozing in and out of sleep on the couch as she kept asking me questions and guidance for her application. I finally told her to just submit the application online. It was the deadline and it was now or never. She hit the submit button and the rest is history.

She received her acceptance phone call and email and package in the mail. My husband and her were able to take a campus tour and ask questions. They both loved the school. Then they went into the financial aid office and met with the adviser. They were told that the financial aid package we thought we were able to receive was not accurate. Based on our reported income, we only qualified for very minimal funding which left a substantial amount for us to come up with.

Their car ride home was solemn. My husband had said that until that moment when they received the devastating news, he would have signed the paperwork that afternoon. They both loved the school for her so much.

We made several phone calls to the financial aid office and the admittance counselor and they confirmed that we could not afford their school. This just didn't seem right to me. I began looking over our paperwork and the financial information that we had submitted and remember standing in the kitchen, leaning over the counter with papers spread everywhere, phone in one hand, when I caught an error! Income had been reported twice! no wonder we didn't qualify for financial aid! We didn't make that much! I am unemployed!

I immediately call the financial aid office and tell them of the error that I have found. They advise me that I have to go online and update our information and they will call us when they see the changes on their end.

My husband fixed the errors and printed the new update. We then emailed the confirmation page to the admittance counselor. and waited.

The counselor called us and told us that our changes made a difference. They could now offer us a grant and we qualified for a federal grant too. This helped but we were still missing funding. When my daughter looked over the new paperwork, she noticed that a substantial federal grant was missing from the financial aid offer. She thought with our new information that she should qualify for this grant.

I called financial aid again. The counselor told me that she would look into the grant since we should qualify now. She called back a few days later and said that my daughter did not qualify due to her gpa. She advised us to call her high school counselor and see if this was an error. This year, our daughter was maintaining a 4.0 gpa.

Our daughter spoke with the school counselor the next day and he felt that yes indeed, the reported gpa was an error and it could be fixed and she could get that grant! Our decision for this college was beginning to rest on this grant. It was substantial and we didn't think we could afford it otherwise. She was told to come back the next day and the office would confirm the gpa and correct it for the grant.

When she went back, another counselor was there and informed her that her gpa was accurate and she did not qualify for the grant.

A big deflating balloon floated by.

The first counselor joined the conversation and they all three were convinced by calculations that indeed the first counselor was correct. no grant.

She texted me the news.

I called the counselor myself to plead our case and ask his advice. He felt that she should keep her sights on this college and try to transfer as a sophomore after her first year at the junior college. I called the college counselor and ran this by him, and he agreed that that was a viable solution. He said that she could keep her grants and would qualify for more financial aid the following year due to her senior grades. In the meantime, he would email financial aid for me and ask if there was anything else the college could offer us.

When my daughter came home from school today, we discussed all of the happenings and concluded that the junior college for one year then the college of her choice would be sufficient.

Then we received the phone call.

It was a missed call on my cell phone. It was the college of her choice.

I was standing out back watching the younger kids play in the splash pool as it was a very hot day today. I was trying to play the message back and was pressing buttons to change the receiver on my phone from blue tooth to hand set to speaker phone. I missed half of the message. All I caught was ...good news! we are able to offer $10,000!...

wait, what!!?!

I frantically press buttons and try to start replaying the message.

I ran over to my daughter sitting on this computer, contemplating her future, or checking facebook, one or the other. I say "Listen to this!!!"

"We are pleased to be able to offer you another grant in addition to the scholarship that we have already awarded you. This grant was actually $300 more than the federal grant that we had tried to receive! What's interesting about this grant is that it is about the same amount of money but it is college specific so it clearly defines which college she should attend!

We feel sure that God is now pointing a big red arrow at this school for us!

We are still ironing out details and still praying the last of the funding to work out. But right now, we are trusting that God never completely shut that door for a reason and strengthened our faith and prayer time to clearly let God lead us down the road to her future!

Praise God!