Many of you have kept up with my family’s journey over the
last year as we sold our home and searched for another. I have been waiting for almost a year to
write this blog and today I am able to write it…I will warn you that it is long
so pull up a chair, take a seat, relax and please take the time to read.
First, let me say a great big thank you to everyone who
sponsored a Dominican mission team member over this last month! We have had all 10 Dominicans fully sponsored
as of Sunday! I will report on how their
mission trip goes later this year.
Praise God and thank you for being faithful to pray, give, and share the
word with others about this need!
Second, I ask you to pray for me as I preach at Audubon
Drive Bible Church in Laurel on June 23.
Pray that doors would open for me to preach and to lead family
discipleship conferences, missions conferences, revivals, harvest days, and to
just share about the work of Mission Surge.
Finally, I want to share with you about this journey that my
family has been on for the last 3+ years!
Let me begin all the way at the beginning. Several years ago (in 2010) Mandy and I began
to feel compelled to be totally debt free.
We had everything paid off except for our home we purchased in 2007. To make a long story short I will say that we
put together a plan to sell several things, remodel everything, and add onto the
HUD foreclosure we had purchased in 2007 in order to sell it for a profit. We would then pool all of our resources
together with that profit and purchase another home debt free…or at least close
to debt free.
I made a list of all of the repairs and additions that we
believed necessary to make a descent amount off of our home and committed each
one of them to prayer. It would take a
host of pages to share with you how many times God miraculously provided materials
for little or nothing. I can’t name all
of the free manpower He provided. And
there were even times He provided money to accomplish all that we set out to
accomplish on that home. We attempted to
acknowledge Him in all that we set out to do trusting that He would direct our
paths.
Over the next two years I watched the prayer list dwindle as
each prayer was answered one by one.
Finally, in May of 2012 every prayer request, concerning this vision,
had been answered except for two.
1. That God would
provide a buyer for our home and
2. That god would
provide us with the home he wanted us to have.
It only took God 2 months to answer one of those
requests. On Sunday, July 8, 2012 we had
a solid offer on our home. God had
answered so many prayers so promptly, we felt sure that He would provide us
with a new home (debt free) by the time we had to be out of our old house. He didn’t…
and we found ourselves moving into an empty house in the
area in order to house sit while we house hunted. It was a little more difficult finding a home
because I had come to believe that God wanted us to buy a home with 6-8 acres
or more (I have 4 boys that I believe should grow up working hard and learning
about raising food etc…just a personal preference). When you consider how much money we had to
make this purchase it seemed like it was going to require a miracle. But we looked as we lived in this transition
home rent free by God’s grace. The house
we were house-sitting in was scheduled to go on the market in the spring of
2013. We had several months to search
for a house and we were sure that God would provide us the home that He wanted
for us before we had to move again. He
didn’t….
The house we were living in sold in January and we had to
move out before Feb 1. To make things
more interesting we found out that we were expecting baby 5 during this
time. Many questions began to surface in
our minds. Should we rent? Well, rent in our area is more than our
mortgage was and we couldn’t afford it. Should
we just settle for a small house in an older subdivision that we could hopefully
afford? Even though I felt like all eyes
were on us I couldn’t throw in the towel on the vision that I believed God had
given me for a home, debt free, with 6 to 8 acres or more. But where would we go in February?
We swallowed our pride (at least some of it), moved our
furniture into storage and moved ourselves to my in-laws. Now the pressure was really on. As the arrival of the baby crept closer and
closer we felt sure that God was going to provide us a home before he was
born. He didn’t….
Silas was born May 14th to homeless parents! Well, we had a roof over our head by God’s
grace, but we didn’t have a home yet. We
began to look at higher priced homes that would require us to borrow. We begin to look at homes with no
acreage. We began to exhaust every means
available to us and finally came to the place where we felt as though God was
not going to answer that last prayer request related to this vision. He had answered all of the other requests
promptly and on time. We had been
waiting, asking, seeking, and knocking concerning this last prayer request for
2 months shy of a year! It has been a
journey to say the least and we were on the verge of throwing in the towel on the
vision.
Then as suddenly as an afternoon shower arises, God put a
house before us that we had made an offer on 3 months earlier. It was a foreclosure with 8.3 acres and a 40
X 40 barn as well as a basement office area for me. Did I mention it had a basement office area
for me? Our offer had been rejected 3
months earlier and the home went under contract with another family. We moved on until out of the blue the
contract fell through and the home came back on the market. The bank was past ready to get rid of
it. We made our original offer again and
within 3 hours we were under contract for the first time in almost a year of
house hunting…and we were able to purchase it without borrowing a dime by God’s
grace.
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| This is the home we plan to close on Friday |
God has finally answered that last prayer request! We close this Friday and I now have another prayer
list. Since it was a foreclosure it is
going to need a little TLC. Once again I
am praying for materials, manpower, and money to make those repairs without
borrowing…I just hope it doesn’t take God a year to answer them!
Please pray for us as we begin the next phase of this
journey. We are overwhelmed at how
faithful God has been. We have learned a
little bit more about what it means to wait upon the Lord. We have learned a lot more about ourselves
and our weakness. In so many areas of
this journey we failed, our faith faltered, and our attitudes were less than
acceptable. We are grateful for God’s
grace and forgiveness and mercy. And we
are grateful that He has been faithful to fulfill the vision that we firmly
believed He gave to us more than 3 years ago.
Please pray for us as we begin the work on this home with a 1 month old,
2 year old, 5 year old, and two 8 year olds.
It is going to be a challenging, yet exciting time. Please pray that God would provide what we
need to get this home ready to move in ASAP.
Thank you for being faithful to pray!
