Shantel and I first met when she was attending my ward, which I had just moved into, which was actually her old ward and the ward she was going to be moving back into in just a couple months. Confused? Basically she was attending my ward because she liked it better than her's and she was about to move back in anyway. As a result, however, she wasn't able to pay tithing often because she never saw her bishop.
Fast forward a couple months and now I'm living in a different ward and Shantel is back in my old ward officially. Ironically, I had to work during my new ward's time, so I was now attending that old ward, which was now Shantel's ward. Now you're really confused. But that's okay. All you really need to know is that both of us had gone through extended stretches in which we had attended wards other than our own, thereby making it difficult to keep up on our tithing. And then we got engaged.
We planned on getting married mid-semester in spite of the challenges of finding housing, selling our current rental contracts, etc. But we took that leap of faith together because we knew it was what we were supposed to do and when we were supposed to do it.
Have you ever tried to sell a housing contract in Provo in the middle of a semester? Not an easy task! We knew it would be a challenge, but we also hoped that the very worst case scenario was that we would sell our contracts starting in January and we would only get stuck with an extra month's rent for each of our contracts.
Then we paid our tithing. It wasn't an "I'll bet God will help us sell our contracts if we pay our tithing" decision. It was a "Wow. Neither of us have paid our tithing in quite a while and that's just something we need to do" decision. But as soon as we did it the blessings came!
It was only a matter of days and Shantel sold her contract starting at the beginning of November. So we didn't get stuck with both of our single housing rents and our married housing rent in November like we assumed we would. It saved us almost $300 that month, not to mention the almost $300 for December, which doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount now, but at the time it would have been a seemingly insurmountable loss.
I was not able to sell my contract in November or December, but fortunately my roommate's brother came home from his mission and bought my contract starting January. The greatest blessing though was that my apartment complex agreed to use my deposit to pay for my December rent so that we didn't have to use that extra money and then wait for the deposit to get sent to us. These blessings fell right into place the second we paid our tithing, and it remains one of the greatest miracles that we have experienced as a couple. Our faith as we took a step forward to get married even though it made no financial sense, and our faith to pay our tithing when it made even less financial sense (even though it was a no-brainer for us because that's how we were raised) led to these financial blessings and allowed us to get on our feet quickly after we were married.
Those blessings have continued through our first 16-plus months of marriage so far. We were blessed to afford the payments for a new car and find one with zero percent interest. We have been blessed with Shantel being able to return to a job at the law school. We have been blessed that Shantel's job pays enough that I have been able to take lower paying jobs to get the experience that I need to hopefully start a career in sports soon.
God is watching over us, and when we pay our tithing and keep His commandments He blesses us and directs us to all sorts of success, including financial stability. We are by no means rich or even "well off," but we are "well enough off." We have some student loans and a car payment to pay off, but we know we have been tremendously blessed and taken care of by our Heavenly Father. We have been blessed to the point that we have even been able to help others when they have been in need, and I believe that we were a blessing to at least one other individual as they paid their tithing. The Lord has blessed us so much that He could use us to bless others, and we are eternally grateful for that!
