A long while back I shared how I had always dreamed of owning a house... not sure if it's because we move so much and are so "rootless" in this job or if it's just cause I'm an American through and through or because I'm a girl and like to "nest" or because I've always wanted to be a financial planner and owning a home is a great financial move (or so they say....)
Regardless, have always wanted a house.... but you don't become a missionary for the paycheck. :)
BUT the Lord has given us a house! We own it (well, technically the bank does still) but we get to make mortgage payments on it for the next 30 years. :) Several years ago Brant's grandmother, who he was very close to, passed away and left us a chunk of money - which we didn't get until this spring. It didn't take us real long to figure out what to do with the money - with the stock market crazy and with interest rates on home loans so low and home prices low, it seemed like the best option to buy a house... so we did!
I can't say it was the easiest process buying from overseas, and I don't necessarily recommend it; it definitely helps to have a brother who's a mortgage broker and a father who's a home inspector and a sister who has practiced real estate law... got all the bases covered. :) We closed two weeks ago on a little house in Bastrop, Texas... you can google it for all you non-Texans. :) Small town outside of Austin - about an hour from my parents - which is a good distance :) and we have a great supporting church there that we really like, so figure it would be a good place to call "home" when we're on furloughs. Might kill me to wait two years to actually get to see our house in person though.... :)
In other housing news, we have moved to a new house here in town. I LOVE it. Our other house was horrible - plastic windows, wooden floors (not nice hardwood floors - thin planks that gave you splinters and you could see the ground between the cracks in the wood) and thin wooden walls that gave you no privacy or any type of insulation for the heat.... should I go on about how much I hated that house? :) The main horrible thing about the house, especially for us as missionaries, was that it was very isolated - we lived on a missions base, surrounded by other mission bases, with no national neighbors - I could go a week or more without talking to an Indonesian other than at the grocery store.... not exactly what we had planned for our life as missionaries. :)
So our new house is stone with tile floors - which is definitely scarier in earthquakes (Haiti would be mild compared to here if we ever had a big one hit) but it's so much cooler - all our windows have screens and glass, so we can open them and actually get a breeze. It's light and clean looking and a great set-up for our family.
The best part about the house is that it's right smack dab in the middle of a "kampung" ...not sure how to translate that word - it's basically a village, but in a town, so it's not technically a village - but definitely too rustic for the term "neighborhood." There are a bunch of houses around a dirt square, dogs and chickens and naked kids running everywhere.... the river runs right by our house, and none of the houses in our kampung (except ours!) have running water - people just get their water from the river..... very much a village feel going on here. :) So we get to have a village ministry right along with our supply buying ministry.... huge blessing from the Lord. The boys and I go to a neighborhood "Bible" class every week led by one of the ladies in the kampung. Not exactly all there doctrinally but it's a good starting point and today the lady invited me over after the class to talk and hang out. The boys are playing with the myriads of little kids running around and Ezra loves going outside to see all the animals everywhere and I have all my pictures hung and kitchen set up, so feeling very much at home.
Our new house doesn't have AC, so I'm sitting here all hot and sweaty and going to sign off so I can go get a cold shower (to compensate for no AC, we also don't have hot water - but who wants to take a hot shower on a hot day!) Very thankful for the Lord plopping us here for the year and very thankful that I can dream of my own house in Texas - that does have both AC and hot water! :)
