Blog 'miracle' saves Christmas family.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The kindness of strangers and power of the Internet saves one family's Christmas

The Sampsons faced foreclosure until a friend blogged about their plight

Within days, strangers from around the country donated more than $11,000

Ebony Sampson: "It makes you understand what the season is all about"

(CNN) -- 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.
Read on from CNN.