The Story Of Our House

For those who just like summaries: WE FOUND A HOUSE!!!!

The Story

We always knew that we would have to move at some point.  When we moved here six months ago, we picked our house in one day because we had only 2 weeks to move before the family who was moving into our old home arrived.  We never would have imagined back then that we would end up staying out here, but it now looks like that is a good possibility.  Our house is fine, but the landlord has been a bit difficult.  It took months to get our roof repaired which was supposed to be done before we moved in.  He has ignored anytime we needed things done and then last month showed up to tell us he was raising the rent.  Although we were pretty frustrated with this at first, we soon came to realize that perhaps this was God gently pushing us to start moving.

So we began the house hunt. I will be honest during the house hunt I experienced a little bit of an internal battle.  There are really nice houses closer into town (one even had a bath tub), but most of the people from our church live outside of town.  Finally we decided that our number one priority was to be in the neighborhood that was best for our ministry and began praying that God would provide us a house in this area.   Hunting for a house requires a lot of walking, asking and negotiating. Our schedule was pretty full and so I also was praying for God to drop something in our lap.  Last week on the walk home from a prayer meeting, Cecil pointed out that right behind their house there were a few vacant places.  A few days later we stopped by to look at some of them.  The end result is that we had two great housing options to pick from.  Yesterday Joel finished up the negotiations and so things are in motion.  YAY!!!!  The house is not complete yet, but hopefully will be done around the 20th so we can move in by the end of the month.

We are so excited because….

• We are moving into a home we could potentially stay in for a long time and will take the time to set it up like we want it.
• We both really like the house and think it will work well for us
• We are moving even closer to our host family
• We are moving only 2 blocks away (if such a thing existed here), so we should be able to stay in contact with all our neighbors
• We will have to pay a little more in rent but believe it will be more practical for our ministry.  It has extra space we can use for language classes or possibly providing shelter to someone if the need arises.
• We have a finished flat roof with a high wall where the boys can scooter and get energy out (not that they ever need to do that)
• We have already met some of our new neighbors and they are very welcoming
• We should get to move before our family arrives in December
• We both have complete peace that this is where we should be

A Few Pictures (more will come once we move in)

Some Reflection

This house has been available for a year, so I did spend a little time wondering why God didn’t bring us to this house when we first moved here.  I don’t pretend to know the answer to that question, but I do know that the six months we lived in this house has changed who we are and helped us to adapt in ways that I don’t know we would have without it.  Our time without running water taught us how to value water just like those around us.  Our time living among insects helped us to be comfortable even when we are surrounded by unwanted guests.  These past six months have taught us a lot about life here and helped us to understand a lot of the daily struggles that people face.  I thank God for helping us to grow by walking alongside our family through situations we never would have chosen for ourselves.