By Steve Dragon

Just before our youngest son was born in the summer of 1994, we felt inspired to move into Beckie’s childhood home in Farmington, Utah—the very one she had lived in her entire life. It was a small house that had started as a simple structure in the 1930s, built in phases over forty years. Part of it was wood frame, part adobe, and part thin prefabricated panels, all eventually covered with asbestos siding. By the time we moved in, it had expanded to a spacious (not!) 950 square feet.

The living room had a cement slab floor with prefab panel walls and ceiling, the latter sagging a couple of inches in the middle from age. The bathroom was a tight 4' x 9' with a tiny 4' x 4' shower, a small vanity, and a toilet. Just outside the bathroom, the clothes washer drained into a 2” diameter steel pipe that ran directly into the toilet. The kitchen/dining room floor was covered with indoor/outdoor carpet, where we often found fresh slug trails leading up to the kitchen sink each morning.

The house had three bedrooms, one of which could only be accessed by walking through our master bedroom. The master bedroom was just big enough for our queen bed, with barely a foot and a half of walking space on either side and an aisle of less than three feet between the foot of the bed and the dresser—this same aisle also served as access to the smallest bedroom/home office. For about half of the six years we lived there, the largest bedroom was where our six kids—two girls and four boys, ranging from five to fourteen—shared two bunk beds, each with a double mattress on the bottom and a twin on top.

I’m pretty sure Beckie still considers these six years to be the most miserable and challenging of our entire time together.

We’d thought about remodeling the house, but once we saw the condition of the structure, we knew it wouldn’t be cost-effective. After expressing our frustration to our hometeacher, he decided to help us do something about it. With his support, we received approval from the city to live in the old house while we built a new one behind it. I designed the new house myself and created a full set of construction documents. We applied for a construction loan, which I suspect was made possible by certain people pulling strings—given our financial situation at the time. During this process, Beckie’s family deeded us the property as her share of the family inheritance, which helped make the loan possible. And our hometeacher coordinated numerous volunteers from our ward and stake to help build the new house.

There were countless blessings throughout this entire experience, some of which included:

• The fact that, “coincidentally,” I had worked for a high-end residential architect for a few months before this, learning how to design my own house and produce construction documents.

• A construction contractor in our ward volunteering his time, heavy equipment, and expertise as our general contractor for minimal compensation.

• Many skilled volunteers who donated both time and materials, including concrete for the footings and foundation.

• A faithful bishop who inspired us to downsize the house after we had already begun building the original two-story design. His guidance led to a redesign from a 2,800-square-foot home to a single-level home of less than 1,600 square feet, all on the same footprint.

• So much help from so many people that we were able to construct the entire redesigned house with the construction loan we qualified for.

Looking back, this experience was perhaps the greatest blessing of our married life. Moving into the old house felt like it was inspired by the Lord, but it was undoubtedly one of the hardest times for our family. Yet, when we finally moved into the new house and watched the old one get torn down and hauled away, it felt like a moment of pure joy and elation.

I didn’t understand it fully at the time, but now I know: every adversity is accompanied by an equal and opposite blessing.

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