Not to make light of this, but man, it must be nice!

Via CNN.com:

A family facing foreclosure is anything but a unique story in these troubled economic times.

But this is a happier story of one family whose financial ruin was averted by the actions of a friend, the compassion of strangers, the networking power of the Internet and the holiday spirit of giving.

“This is our Christmas story,” said Ebony Sampson. “It’s going to be told for generations and generations to come.”

Sampson, who lives in Aberdeen, Maryland, with her husband, Daniel, and their two young children, has overcome more hardship than one person should ever have to face. When she was in the 10th grade, she lost her entire family in a horrific car accident. Raised by a grandmother in New York, Ebony eventually used some life-insurance money from her parents’ death to buy the home in Aberdeen, near where she grew up.

But in June, Daniel got sick. After several tests, his doctors concluded that he was suffering from salmonella after eating a tainted tomato. As a new employee of Bank of America, he had not accrued enough paid time off to keep his job as a credit-card account manager.

Suddenly, the sole breadwinner in the Sampson household was out of work. Though the Sampsons received unemployment checks from the government, the money wasn’t enough to make ends meet.

First came the shut-off notices from the electric company. Then one of their cars broke down. One morning, Daniel woke up and looked out his bedroom window and saw his truck was missing. It had been repossessed.

With no job, no car and no income, the Sampsons got another surprise: Ebony Sampson learned she was eight weeks pregnant.

The Sampsons returned home from church, where they are practicing ministers, on a Sunday in November to find a stranger knocking on their front door. He wanted to put a bid in on their house. Ebony told him their home was not for sale. The next day, the Sampsons were notified that they were facing foreclosure unless they could come up with $10,000 in the next two weeks to bring their mortgage up to date.

“Once we received that letter, it was like, ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do?’ ” Daniel Sampson said. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind would receive a foreclosure notice and not be rattled by it.”

Somehow, the couple maintained their sense of humor. Ebony Sampson called one of her oldest friends, Jaki Grier, and jokingly asked her if she had $10,000. Jaki told her, “Sure, just let me open up my invisible purse!”

But then Grier got an idea.

A self-described geek, Grier started blogging years ago. Since then, she’s contributed to a magazine’s Web site and regularly posts thoughts and life happenings on her LiveJournal page. So, she published Ebony and Daniel’s story, along with a link where people could make a donation.

Pretty bad when you gotta use a Blog and the internet as a tin cup. They were ministers, why didn’t the Church take up a collection for them?

Some Church. 🙄

Of course, when a white man like me says anything about it. I’m a raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccciiiiiist!

Update: For those who think I am being cruel or just being an asshole. Let me tell you something, ok? I used to be in over my head in debt. Finally, I filed for backruptcy. I filed for chapter 7, I lost it all, and started over.  I had a Paypal account myself, did I get on the internet and cry, “Please send me money!”? No, I didn’t; I would never ask anyone else to help “Bail me out” of a sitution I put myself into. The facts are, they could have filed for backruptcy, even reaffairmed some of thier debts, like the house and could have been able to keep it. But no, they took the beggers route. It just steams me when I see people do that, I never did, I delt with my own problems and did what I could, I could have taken the route these people did, but I did the right thing and, as they say in the ghetto, “Delt with my own.”