I had been waiting to share with you all how we really came about getting this house until I had some time to write it all down. For you all that have known us for a long while you can testify to how God has moved in some mysterious ways when it comes to us finding a home. I think the best story is when we were renting our first home in Houston and received a certified letter in the mail notifying us that we had 3 days to evacuate the premises. We had been faithfully paying our monthly rent to a management company and unbeknown est to us the owner had been foreclosed on. After contacting the law firm that sent us the letter and explaining the circumstances they graciously gave us 30 days to move out. We were in a spot and needed to find a house quickly. We found a nice neighborhood in a good location with a great first house for us that someones loan had fallen through, thus the house was ready to move in and accommodated our 30 day time frame. It would require us putting $10,000 down. Mark and I decided to walk around the neighborhood, enquiring about the builder. The first house we went to backed up to the house we were considering buying and happened to be the same exact house. We told the man that answered the door that we were considering buying the home behind them and wondered how they liked their builder and the neighborhood. He said,"Well, my wife and I are considering selling our home, we just inherited some property and want to move on to it, you could just move in here and pick up the payments." The house was only 6 months old, the exact house we were considering, had all the new house bugs worked out, a low interest rate... They invited us back to see the house the next night and amazingly the lady had picked out all her bathroom wallpaper to match her bedspread and guess what? I had the exact same bedspread!! It was a very unusual antique lace bedspread!! We were concerned telling them about our time crunch and they said, "No worries, we have an empty rental property that we can move into and you can move in here within the week." What a blessing that house on Little Redwood was to us. Anyway, I could tell you several other house stories but I'll save those for another day, I'll get to this Thailand house.
I think some of you sensed that we just weren't sure about the house on the golf course, but really getting the contract signed just wasn't happening for a number of reasons. We should have been signed and settled there three weeks ago. Remember, the landlord was on vacation, then they raised the price and didn't want to work through our realtor...We wanted to be really close to the boys school but didn't know if we wanted to live on an American feeling country club in Thailand. It is very secluded and is almost entirely filled with students'families from the International school. After a few weeks at the school the boys weren't sure they wanted to be with those specific kids 24/7. I had talked to a couple of moms in the development that had voiced some frustrations with kids from the neighborhood always in your house and the development being so far from the city feeling isolated at times. I wasn't too worried about the isolation part except relocating requires a lot of shopping trips getting settled. It seemed the door to this house continued to be closed to us and after a few days we felt like we just needed to start looking again-arrggh. I was tired of searching for a house but my friend, Molly had told me about a house that another ex-pat had looked at that was a great house that had been for sale and the owner had agreed to lease but was too big for their single child family. I found out the general area and relayed the information to our realtor, he said he could find out the details. The following day we venture out to see this house. After some searching and several phone calls we think we are at the house. After numerous attempts to get someone to open the gate, the housekeeper lets us in to this really, really beautiful home, the garden and pool were small but the decorating was just great. I was excited. As we are looking through the house the owner arrives and wants to know what we are doing in his house, "This house isn't for lease!" How embarrassing but thankfully he remembered our realtor from a prior transaction. He was a friendly chap who understood our predicament and mentioned that his neighbor who had been trying to sell his property for 9 months and was in a bit of financial duress might be open to leasing. He provided his phone number and after speaking with our realtor he said come over and have a look and that yes, he would consider leasing. Martin (our new neighbor) led us over to the property and within the hour we were talking specific lease items. We would have never found this property otherwise! That's why I think God led us to this house.
It is a great property for the boys, lots of land, a nice pond and a great pool. Later, I brought the boys and Mark to see it and right away the boys were sold on this house even though it would require a bus ride to the school. I think it will allow us more family time, it's half the distance to our church than the original house, and 7 minutes from the Clarkson family and it really is like living in Thailand. We have open fields all around the perimeter of our property, on the other side of our rock fence. On one side we always have some cattle staked out grazing on the empty lots. This morning I saw 3 water buffalo grazing on the other side of the property. We hear roosters every morning around 6:30 and have goats in the roads at times. I took a different walking route this morning and passed many surprised faces to see a Farang or white person in their neighborhood. I'm just dying to communicate with some of the Thai women who are outside their tin huts cooking or washing their clothes in a tub, but it very difficult and for now I just smile and wave. It is very humbling to see how so many of the people live here, lots of our neighbors don't have electricity, we are so, so blessed and have so much. I pray that we can be a blessing in this neighborhood. It will be a challenge because we are all 'walled' in and the language is an issue. Tomorrow, Nong's sister is coming to perhaps clean for me. When I told Nong's husband I would pay 6000 Baht/month ($180 roughly) I think he said that Nong would come and clean for me!! But she likes her hut by the roadside that sells water and soft drinks, I think he said that she won't even clean their house!! Our driver is given 6000 Baht for his base pay from his company and he does receive benefits of some sort and overtime pay, but driving jobs are sought after and are prestigious. Our driver has a wife and son to support on that! America is a blessed nation for sure.
Please pray for our safety in this new neighborhood, that we would have an impact here and bring much glory to God during our time in Thailand. "As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord."
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