Help James & Christie Overcome Hardship

Hi we are Christie and James. This is a long read. Neither one of us likes asking for help, but we know we're at a point where we really don't have a choice. Last summer James took a gamble to try and have a real career and make much more money than we ever have by taking Swifts truck driving school. He successfully completed it and got his CDL, but not even a month actually driving for them, they let him go. To make matters worse, initially 100% of the schooling was going to be covered thanks to his father's service in the National Guard, but because they let him go before he worked with them for a year, that cost is no longer being covered and now is our $12,000 headache. We're not asking for help to pay that. I just want to explain how we got in the situation we're in now.

The loss of that job happened I believe at the beginning of October 2024. From that point on is when things quickly got very difficult. My husband previously worked at a Meat Processing Plant, who told him if the trucking didn't work out and they still had a position open, he could come right back. That turned out to not be true. Even though his position had not been filled, he could not get anyone to talk to him other than his previous supervisor who instructed him to reapply. He never heard from them again until he was already training for his new job at TDCJ in April to become a Correctional Officer. From August to the beginning of December we had no income, because the truck driving school was unpaid training until after receiving your CDL. We were living off of our income tax return I had filed an extension for and filed later in the year.

Finally in December a third party Amazon delivery company hired him. He had two days of paperwork and watching training videos and one day of on the job training. Then instead of working, was not put on the schedule for a week because of the holidays. After that he worked one or two days most weeks. Then he was let go in January, because he wasn't finishing his routes by a certain time.

We lost track of how many jobs he applied to until TDCJ contacted him and finally is what will hopefully work out for us. I haven't worked a standard job since 2017. I developed several health issues since moving to Texas and already had others that got worse leading up to the loss of my job. I now, along with my husband when not at his main job, do deliveries for food services like Uber Eats and Door Dash.

The reason we're asking for help is at the end of February we had to move out of our apartment or else we would be evicted. Thankfully the leasing office worked with us and didn't charge late fees for our last rent being late or fees for leaving a month before our lease was up. We are very greatful for that.

His grandparents have a half single-wide trailer on their farm where we are staying now. Its only half, because the other half was cut off after catching on fire. Its been on the property for almost 50 years and only used for storage. It has never been used for living, so zero maintenance has been done on it. Last year's tornado damaged it a lot and many places leak and most wood is rotted, along with one of the main walls bowed in. There are several places in the floor we can't walk on without falling through to the ground outside. A lot of this can be seen in the photos I included. They were taken the day before we moved in. We had to get rid of all of our living room furniture, our bed, my computer desk and chair. Along with tons of other things. We also had to put down our elderly cat who suddenly got very ill and stopped eating and drinking in January. She was almost 18.

We moved here on February 26th. We have no heat and had several 30°F-40°F days at that time. We also initially had no power or water. Along with no access to the main house, because his grandparents were in the hospital. They have been in and out of it since then, but we can only get in the house if they let us in. So we have no use of their bathroom, kitchen or laundry room. Eventually a neighbor connected a power line from one of the barns, so we have enough power to turn on a light and the few small appliances we have, but not at the same time. We have a garden hose connected that uses the well water. Which can't be used for drinking or showering. The run off from the garden seeps into it, which they use fertilizer on. So naturally the water smells like poo and is brown.

Since my husband's job is a State job. He only gets paid once a month. When he started, his Academy class started 7 days late. His first paycheck on May 1st was not able to get all of our current bills taken care of, since it was only for a partial month. We also don't make enough from food delivery to do anything beyond keeping gas in the car and eating once, sometimes twice a day. Even though we both ended up working 7 days a week. We've tried other ways to at least get things like Walmart gift cards by answering surveys for SurveyJunkie or playing certain mobile games through Mistplay. $5 or $10 worth here and there once, sometimes twice a week. Whatever to keep our car and bodies running.

Any amount of money people are willing to donate is greatly appreciated. The $2,000 we are hoping to raise is to help get our past due bills paid so we don't have our phones shut off or our car repossed. As well as prevent us from losing our car insurance, get our bank account out of the negative again and finally pay the last power bill from our last apartment. We're not asking for help with anything like his driving school bill that went to collections.

We're hoping that people understand that this didn't happen because of a lack of trying. We did everything we could to get help from all the different churches and organizations around, but constantly got told no.

If we were getting these bills taken care of by the help of you. It would mean when my husband gets paid again, we can finally wash our clothes. Something we haven't been able to do since our washer broke in February. We'd also be able to pay to use the showers at our local truck stop, since we can't shower in the trailer or his grandparents house. We'll also slowly be able to get work done on the car and get much needed diabetic supplies for my husband.

If you made it this far, know that words can't express how grateful we are if you're able to help. If you can't, that's ok.