Baking with my daughter

Time to resurrect this moribund blog! On Saturday, my daughter, Christina, and I attempted a lemon meringue pie. I've baked one before, but I find them a little daunting because it is a three-step process: first the baked pie shell, then the lemon pudding filling, then the meringue topping. Actually, it wasn't so hard. Christina missed the pie shell part, but she was a big help in the filling and topping parts. The result is pictured above. A good pie was had by all!

The Reason I Do What I Do

The following link is to a post that explains better than I can the importance of Bible translation for the spread of the gospel and the preservation of culture. Towards the end the author makes an explicit reference to Wycliffe. This is all the justification I need for the work that I do supporting the translation teams here in Cameroon.

http://www.worldview.edu.au/?p=62

The Beginning of Certainty

The following story was posted on the Facebook page of a man with whom I serve in Cameroon, Africa. I asked for his permission to post it on my blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. His name is Bob Ulfers, and he has been working amongst the Karang people of Cameroon for over 20 years.

"My Karang father Boonang says, "90% of the Karang lie, all the time. But I'm OK because I only lie 50% of the time!" Similarly, in Karang folktales the heroes gain by deception and victims lose because they tell the truth. In one story a man told the king about a talking skull. The king sent his soldiers with the man to see if it was true. But the king's soldiers executed the man for "lying" because the skull refused to talk. After the execution the soldiers were shocked to hear the skull begin talking to the dead man. In fear they concluded with this 'moral' lesson, "If we tell the truth we die, if we hide it we are safe."

Another one of my Karang fathers Doda says, "To be Karang is to fear. If you are not afraid, you are not Karang." Yet Yezmin and I see how fear leads to death.

Most fatal illnesses in our village are neglected curable ones. People don't go to the clinic on time. "It is a spirit causing the illness," or "it is the hand of man (sorcery)." Once those fears grip them, a myriad of choices are presented by "helpful" neighbors, like hallucinogenic drugs or consulting a medium to determine the source. Then comes the search for the 'anti-curse' against your enemy followed by sacrifices and rituals. Relatives come with a myriad of indigenous medicines until all traditional avenues are exhausted. The trembling sufferer runs from one cure, ritual, or soothsayer to the next, accusing innocent people of attacking him. The accused in turn becomes so irrationally afraid, he 'confesses' to the crime to avoid punishment or he escapes the village often not to return. By the time the patient arrives at the hospital it is too late, he dies "proving" that it was indeed sorcery or spirits or something else, because you see, "even the white-man-medicine could not save him." We have seen this pattern over and over and over.

After 20 years I say, "There is one thing certain about the Karang worldview: Nothing is certain!"

Deception, hiding the truth, living in fear and continuous uncertainty are all deeply ingrained in everyday life. All of the above behaviors can be found in the lives of baptized 'Christians.' Many of these have grown up listening to preaching and scripture readings in languages that they hardly understand. However for the past two years, the Gospels have been available in the Karang language. So we ask, is the Gospel of truth, courage, and certainty of salvation beginning to impact the Karang worldview?

Out of the fifteen village chapels in our area, at least four now use the Karang gospels and the Karang children's Sunday school book. Their services and preaching are in the Karang language.

One Sunday Yezmin and I joined the believers in the village of Kambang. We witnessed a small evidence of how truth, courage and certainty of the gospels is taking root.

It was announced during the service that a deacon was being disciplined for having done something unchristian. Later an elder explained that someone had put a curse on the deacon's home. Helpful neighbors told the deacon to seek an anti-curse sacrifice of a goat. He gave in to the typical uncertainty, easily abandoning his position as a Christian in fear of the resulting illness or death of the curse. So he killed a goat in a traditional ceremony at his home.

Now the reader should know that most Karang church goers would do the same, just to be sure to cover all the bases. So I was amazed that the elders of the Kambang chapel had taken that a stand against the deacon's action. What gave them the courage? How is it that they did not fear the consequences of the curse themselves? Where did the certainty of the decision come from?

"You see," continued the elder, "The man did not understand."

I braced myself for an explanation of fear which I have heard so often like,"God will send him to hell!" but to my pleasant surprise instead, the truth of the Gospel (a copy in his hands) flowed from his lips with heart felt simplicity:

"He insulted the sacrifice of God. Jesus died for us and that is all we need."

In that one statement I saw truth, courage and certainty and I thank God. The certain message which is beginning to take root came from the book in that elder's hands."

A Walk in the Rain Forest

I have enjoyed looking at birds for many years now. My interest was stimulated by the wide variety of pretty birds that inhabit the yard of the apartment I rent here in Cameroon. The bright yellow village weaver, the aptly-named blue fairy flycatcher, the green-and-red iridescent olive-bellied sunbird, and the three-tone gray Mackinnon’s shrike are my neighbors at various times of the year. These are lovely birds that would encourage almost anyone to get to know them. I got myself a Collin’s Birds of Western Africa book and got to know them better.

Later, I hooked up with a missionary from the Navigators who is a serious birder. Randy has been in this country longer than I, and he has traveled far and wide to check out different birds that can be found here in Cameroon. So, when he asked if I would be interested in going with him to hike up a local mountain and see what we could see, of course I said “yes”.

Friday, September 10, was a “surprise” holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan (and give the working class a day off), so he pulled up in his car at precisely 6:00 a.m., and we drove about 30 minutes southwest of Yaoundé to Mount Kala, a rain-forested hill that Randy had last visited three years ago. Randy was appropriately decked out in a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and baseball cap, and he carried a rain slicker in his backpack along with his binoculars, bird book, and some food. I was, as always, not quite as prepared. I sported jeans, a sport shirt, and $9 Walmart sneakers. I did have an umbrella in my backpack and a small container of peanuts, and I managed to remember to bring a bottle of water, but I really wasn’t dressed for a hike in the rain forest. Worst of all, I wasn’t able to find bug repellant in the apartment before Randy showed up and I had to leave.

We left the city and drove down a long dirt road, dead straight as it went up and down ridges towards our destination. At one point, Randy pulled onto a side road and then parked opposite a wattle-and-daub dwelling with a well near the road where a young child was pumping water into a bucket. Randy engaged in conversation with the child who responded cautiously, and some people in the dwelling peeked out at us from behind the front door. Then, a woman in her early 30’s showed up who welcomed us and gave us permission to park where we did. She was a pastor who was in the process of building a new house on the side of the road where the car was parked, but all that was standing was a frame and a sheet metal roof. Lack of money had stopped the project. She was very sweet and interested in Randy’s ministry, and we felt that the car was in a safe place. (Actually, people in African villages rarely molest other people’s property. It’s in the cities where crime and theft are prevalent.)

We began our hike by backtracking down the road where we came in and then veering off to a trail on the right. As we walked through some lowlands, something bit me repeatedly on the left arm and a few times on the right. Since I never saw the insect, and since it left a telltale red dot slightly smaller than a dime, I assume it was a moot moot. Also called “no-see-ums”, they itch ferociously at first but are otherwise harmless. It was also very overcast and quite cool, probably in the upper 60’s. I was deeply regretting the light-weight jacket I left hanging in my closet.

Shortly after passing the last vestiges of civilization, a heavy mist began to fall. Randy whipped out his rain jacket, and I whipped out a very loud, cheap umbrella that Bonnie and I had picked up at a store the other day. Randy looked like a true birder; I just looked like an idiot. We plodded along on a narrow path, brushing up against leaves that added to the water content in my jeans. On occasion, there was a clear area where we would stop and look around, hoping to see a bird flit between the trees. The heavy mist eventually stopped, but the trees perpetually dripped water the duration of our hike.

Rain forest birding is more a thing for the ears than for the eyes. You can hear them everywhere, but the chances of seeing them are next to nil. Randy knows hundreds of bird calls and was able to identify warblers and marmots, doves and turacos, flycatchers and tinker birds. All I could do was smile and nod. On the hike up the mountain, we hardly saw any birds at all.

However, the forest itself was amazing. One of my desires when I first came to Cameroon 17 years ago was to walk about in a real rain forest, not just the stuff that passes for forest on the edges of the capital. This was not my first experience in the real deal, but it was enchanting nonetheless. It certainly helped that, beyond the initial moot moots, there were no nasty insects, no wild animals, no snakes, nothing even remotely dangerous. The jungle wasn’t impenetrable, but it was dense enough that there was a defined canopy overhead. And the trees! The big hardwoods often had flared bases that shot out some distance from the tree like flying buttresses. Other trees were tall and straight from about five feet up but below that looked like an above-ground root system propping the whole thing up as if on stilts. And the thick, trunk-hugging vines just made the whole environment like something out of a Tarzan flick.

After a fairly good ascent for the better part of an hour, a sheer rock race loomed through the trees to our right, and then we entered a large clearing at the base of a nearly vertical granite wall that actually arched overhead before turning back up and disappearing into a rim of grass at the top, well over a hundred feet over our heads. We passed through a wall of dripping rain from the cliff edge and then were dry and able to rest a bit and observe a couple of swallows darting about the cliff face. Randy reached into his bag and pulled out a bagel and banana meal for each of us. He pointed out some cleats in the rock face where technical rock climbers had left evidence of their route. Amazingly, the route took them around a place where the cliff face was horizontal to the ground. Who in their right minds would climb such a wall? Birding was certainly an easier pursuit.

We made the decision to climb around the cliff and achieve the summit of the “mountain”, so we followed the thin trail up a steep and slick slope to the left of the bare rock and eventually leveled off and reached a clearing that was still deep in the forest but clearly the highest ground around. People had camped there and left discarded water bottles half buried around the edge. We went down a short path to check something out in the treetops – Randy was suspecting monkeys, but we didn’t see anything – and I stood next to an unusual tree to have my portrait taken. On our way back through the clearing, we had a long view in one direction that afforded us our first real bird sighting: a gray-headed negro finch sitting on the bare branches of a dead tree. This was a bird I’d seen earlier in Yaoundé, but I was just happy to finally see something, and the bird is pleasant to look at. Darting in and out of the same tree were a couple of flycatchers that caught our attention as well.

We finally decided that we needed to get back down if I was to make it home in time for lunch, and we promptly realized that we hadn’t been paying close attention when we arrived at the clearing, for we discovered several trails leading away from it and no clear indication of which one we had popped out of earlier. We retraced our route as far as a butterfly net lying beside a wide part of the trail (which neither of us remembered seeing on the way up), and we struck out into the woods at least four times, got lost, and returned to the net before we finally found the right trail back. I was nervous about the hike back down the trail to the base of the cliff because it had been so steep, and steep trails are much easier to climb up than to climb down. However, with the help of a ready supply of vines and saplings, we made it back to “base camp” with no trouble. From there we continued on back to the lowlands, stopped in the vicinity of somebody’s farm to enjoy a gathering of marmots, a couple of chestnut wattle-eyes, and a few other interesting birds. One bird silhouetted against a very bright sky caught my attention, and Randy tried to sidle into the grass to get a better vantage point. He made a guess and whipped out his iPod with recordings of hundreds of bird calls, chose one, and watched to see the bird’s reaction. At first all it did was turn its head towards us, but then it abruptly took off and flew directly over our heads, perching up in the trees where we could no longer see it. Randy got a quick look through his binoculars and identified it as a chocolate-backed kingfisher. I looked it up in my bird book and realized that I missed a beautiful bird. (My binoculars were back in my backpack at the time.) Oh well. I’ve already seen five species of kingfisher in Cameroon – I could miss this one.

As we finished our walk back to the car, I realized that I hadn’t seen too many birds, but I had seen a glorious part of God’s creation, and I had great fellowship with a man of God whom I admire. If those were the only reasons to get wet and tired in the jungle, those were reasons enough.

It's been awhile

I haven't had much in the way of profound thoughts lately. In addition, the dearth of comments on my earlier posts tells me that nobody is paying attention to my blog anyway, so I have no incentive to maintain it. I suspect it will disappear shortly. Oh well - I thought it would be interesting to give it a try. I admire the bloggers who consistently maintain an entertaining blog, like my friend Will in La Crescenta, CA. Perhaps I will have more to say after I'm back in Africa later this summer.

Stay tuned...

Grover Cleveland on Government Charity

Food for thought – In 1887, certain Texas farmers were victims of a devastating drought. A benevolent Congress passed a bill appropriating public funds to help the farmers through the crisis with a government handout. Then President Grover Cleveland vetoed the bill, responding to Congress as follows: “I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose. I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of general suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of common brotherhood” (taken from Arguing with Idiots, Glenn Beck, Threshold Editions-Mercury Radio Arts, 2009, pg. 6-7).

The above quote was, amazingly, written by a Democratic president (must have been a “blue dog”, whatever that means). His feelings were amply justified when contributions from ordinary citizens totaled more than ten times the amount of the appropriation bill. So, do we still want a “nanny” state?

God's Gift of a Home

Both Bonnie and I have been rootless for most of our adult lives. I (Mark) have lived in several apartments since college and have always been happy to be a renter and let the landlord worry about the property. During her years as an elementary school teacher, Bonnie rented a house from her mother and was satisfied with that arrangement. When we married in 1999, neither of us was thinking of ultimately owning a house of our own. We didn’t want the responsibility of a house in the U.S. while stationed overseas and leaving it to the mercy of renters. It was nice having no responsibilities here while we were serving the Lord in Cameroon.

However, over the past ten years, people have told us of the benefits of accruing equity in a home and not throwing money away on rent that we would never see again. Also, we needed to consider where we would end up upon retirement. Finally, having a home would provide our girls a place to pin their affections when they were in college and beyond.

The Catalyst

We first seriously considered home ownership during our 2004-2005 furlough when several of our Wycliffe compatriots with whom we’d served in Cameroon bought homes while we were on a trip through the U.S. Mortgage rates were at their lowest point, and the time seemed ripe to take action. However, lethargy kicked in, we didn’t act quickly enough, and then the time was gone and we had to return to Africa. When we returned to the U.S. in July 2008, and the bottom soon fell out of the housing market, the possibility of owning our very own home became real to us again, but, as before, we didn’t do much more than pray about it. I distinctly remember telling God that we were interested in getting a house but probably wouldn’t take action unless He threw one at us. We left the issue in His hands and went on with our business of raising our support level and finding help for our daughter, Theresa, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome the previous April.

Then, on Monday, September 21, Susan came over to return something she had borrowed earlier. We shared a duplex apartment with Susan and her husband, Dennis, who are Wycliffe missionaries. In casual conversation, she mentioned that she and her husband were house hunting and had two prospects that they were undecided about. We talked with her at length about how they had launched themselves into the house-hunting business, and she spoke very positively about their realtor, an MK (“missionary kid”) named Van who had his own business nearby. We asked if we could go with them to see the houses they were considering, and they were happy to oblige.

The next day, we drove around Duncanville looking at some of the homes in the two neighborhoods they were considering. One, Winona Gardens, was a quiet area where several Wycliffe retirees were living. The other, the Greene, was a private community with a home owners association that paid for a central area where one could swim in a pool, play tennis, or walk on a trail. They had a contract with a ten-day escape clause on a home in the Winona Gardens area, but they were leaning towards a home they had put a bid on in the Greene because they liked the sense of community there. After driving around and looking at some of the homes that they had considered, they drove us to their realtor’s residence and introduced us to him. Van turned out to be a tall, soft-spoken young gentleman who was instantly likeable and happy to introduce us to the joys of house hunting. He got on his computer immediately and plugged in our minimum and maximum prices, our search area, and other key information, and we promptly started receiving sale information via email. Also, before we even returned to our place, he took us on a quick tour of four homes that he knew were available, including the house at the Greene that Dennis and Susan had bid on. That was the only house that captured our attention, but, after mulling them over for a few days, none of those homes really held our interest.

This is It!

Everything changed on Friday the 25th. In the morning, a new listing on Fairlawn Drive popped up in our Inbox that looked intriguing, so we called Van and had him meet us at the house that afternoon. It was a two-story three-bedroom light gray brick structure set back from the road in a beautiful neighborhood that was around 1860 sq. ft. and going for a shade less than our upper price limit. The house had been built in 2002 and was in foreclosure. It had a big living room/dining room area with a very large kitchen, a large master bedroom and bath, and two decent bedrooms upstairs for the girls. The yard was large but had been neglected and would need work. There wasn’t much closet space, and the carpet would have to be entirely replaced. However, it really rang our bells.

In the middle of our inspection, I was walking in the driveway thinking of possibilities, and I noticed a familiar-looking man across the street mowing his front lawn. It turned out to be a man I had worked with on several occasions whenever I was home on furlough, a former pilot for the Papua New Guinea branch of SIL currently working in International Management. I hadn’t realized that he lived on that particular street. Having him and his wife living across the street from our potential future home confirmed my opinion of the place.

Somewhere we heard or read that the house had been devalued substantially, and we sensed that it would be snapped up very quickly, so by late afternoon, we told Van that we would accept the bid as offered by the bank. The selling realtor had a daughter that worked there, so we were able to get word to the bank immediately, and, after the daughter placed a call to Houston, we were notified at 7:00 in the evening that the bank had accepted our bid. We couldn’t believe it! Things were moving faster than we had anticipated.

Flip-flop

On Saturday morning, when we checked our email, another listing was in our box, a four-bedroom 1800 sq. ft. house on Tampico Circle. The picture of the exterior looked wholly uninteresting, but we decided to have a look later in the day. In the morning, at my mother-in-law’s request, we all met at the Fairlawn house and walked through it again, noticing things we had missed the first time like the hole in the ceiling above the laundry room and the fact that the front door had been kicked in at some point. The house still looked good, but we were beginning to get concerned about little things: no guest bathroom (other than a sink to wash your hands), no coat closet, and only three bedrooms. We were kind of hoping for a room we could turn into an office. Still, we were feeling positive about the place, and Bonnie’s mother approved of it. From there we drove past the Tampico residence to view it from the outside, and it looked pretty much like the picture, but we noticed that the lawn was St. Augustine grass and very well maintained. We hadn’t intended to bother our realtor over the weekend, but he was willing to show us the place in the afternoon, so we all gathered there again later in the day and viewed the interior.

Almost the moment we walked in the door we realized that it was a better house. It had a distinct entryway with coat closet, two main living areas, four good-sized bedrooms, a nice kitchen, a vaulted ceiling over the central living room with brick fireplace, and a shed in the back. The lawn was lovingly maintained in both yards with no dead trees or debris to remove. The best part was that the seller had made an agreement with the previous buyers (who backed out at the last minute) to sell them the living room set, the dining room set, the refrigerator, the master bed, the riding lawn mower, and gardening equipment for a pittance beyond the asking price for the house. The place was on the market for our upper limit, but we knew that the seller would accept less because this was the previous prospective buyer’s offer.

Again making a decision on the spot, we asked Van to break the contract (not yet 24 hours old) with the bank that owned the Fairlawn residence and establish a contract with the owner of the Tampico house. Fortunately, we were only out $50 on the first place. A few days later, we had the seller’s signature on the contract, and the lender began processing the paperwork for the new place. (We offered the same amount that the earlier people had offered, including the original offer for the extra furnishings, but we did not include a 10-day escape clause. We wanted the seller to feel like she had a more promising offer this time.) We found out later that the previous buyers on the Tampico house were none other than our neighbors in the duplex! They had not only planted the seed that got us started, they practically handed us one of their choices. Because they still had the inspection report and were happy to share it with us, we didn’t even need to have the place inspected. They laid the groundwork; we just followed in their wake.

The Loan

Backing up a bit, when we had first met with Van, we had no idea if we were even eligible for a loan. Neither Bonnie nor I had taken out a loan on anything other than a car that Bonnie paid off quickly when she was single. We paid the full amount of our credit card purchases every month. We had never been in debt, but we couldn’t provide proof that we were a good credit risk. Given today’s credit-averse climate, we really didn’t know if we had a chance.

We asked Van for a recommendation of a lending agency, and he steered us to PrimeLending and a man named T. J. He and T. J. had worked together on real estate for years. Van liked T. J. because he offered a good, fair lending rate, and he and his organization worked hard to meet closing deadlines with a minimum of delays. So, not knowing where else to go, we gave T. J. a call and set up a meeting for the morning after our decision on the Fairlawn residence.

T. J. worked out of an office in Midlothian, an easy drive from Dallas. When we met him, he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and he made a point of bragging about his paperless office. He had a great, easygoing manner, and he made us feel comfortable about the whole process. We had with us the documents that he had requested concerning our financial background (which he promptly scanned), and, doing a quick check on our credit, he determined that we were pre-qualified for a loan. He calculated a mortgage that beat our current rent, so it sounded good to us. (All of this was based upon the Fairlawn residence; it had to be revised after we had switched to Tampico.)

After our initial meeting with T. J., we spoke with him occasionally on the phone, but we did not see him again until closing. Instead, about a week prior, we received an email from Alicia, the Sr. Loan Officer at PrimeLending, wanting to know how we received our income. I emailed her a letter explaining the process whereby members of Wycliffe received their financial support, and that satisfied her for a few days. Then we received another message from her stating that the “underwriter” wanted assurance of a fixed income and that we would be staying in the U.S. Since we do not receive a fixed income, and since we were planning on returning to Africa next July, we felt like our loan was hanging by a thread. Alicia required a word from our supervisor, so we politely asked our Personal Administrator (a former translator from Papua New Guinea) to write her something, and he did. After two more days of silence and much prayer, we received a message from Alicia with one word in the subject line: “Approval”. We made it!

Almost. It was late Friday afternoon on the 16th, and the one thing holding up the process was our lack of homeowner’s insurance. We had probed for a cost estimate online with our bank, but we had taken no further action because neither Van nor T. J. had prompted us to do so. I immediately got on the phone to our bank and, after half an hour of bargaining for a good policy, got that taken care of. Unfortunately, it missed the desk of Melissa, the escrow officer at Reunion Title, by 10 minutes, but she would have it first thing Monday morning. We figured that our closing date had been pushed to Wednesday, but we were happy to have the loan.

Closing

Van called us on Monday morning with the news that closing would most likely be on schedule (i.e. the next day) and that we needed to set a time for it. We picked 9:00am and got directions to Melissa’s office. We also arranged for the down payment and closing costs to be wired to Reunion Title’s bank, and that went with a minimum of hassle. (It was sobering to see our savings account shrink dramatically, but this was the reason we were saving in the first place.) T. J. got hold of us later in the day and confirmed that closing would be as scheduled.

On Tuesday morning, Bonnie and I got in the car and drove down to Cedar Hill, a town just south of Duncanville, to a cute old homestead on one of the principle streets in town. We drove right past it because we didn’t notice that the parking area entrance was before the house – I was expecting a multi-story glass-and-steel structure. Once we figured it out, we walked inside to be greeted by a pleasant receptionist and directed to a room on the right. Sunlight streamed through the windows into a room that could have been used as a formal dining room. A young woman with a cheerful face and straight blond hair walked in and introduced herself as Melissa. She was ready to go right to work with the signing. She sat down in the center of the oval table with her back to the window, and Bonnie and I sat on her left. She passed a whole series of documents to us for our signature, and we spent over half an hour reading through them (more or less) and signing our names where indicated. At one point in the proceedings, T. J. walked in and joined us. Once we had finished signing the last document, the secretary took them and photocopied the lot so that we would have copies for our records. T. J. and Melissa then congratulated us on our new home, and our part of the process was over. The seller still had to come in and sign her place away, and that was scheduled for 2:00pm. That, too, went smoothly (although we weren’t there for it – we never actually met the previous owner), and the seller left the key and a garage door opener for us to pick up the following day. The house on Tampico was now officially ours!!

From the planting of an idea to pursue home ownership to the actual closing on a home was exactly one month. Our final annual mortgage rate came out to less than T. J.’s initial Good Faith Estimate, and the monthly payments ended up being slightly less that what we were paying on rent at our Sunset Acres residence. The inspection report revealed an out-of-code situation with the wiring, and we spent a substantial amount to get it taken care of, but that was the only thing that needed doing prior to our moving in and taking up residence. (The house at 1010 Fairlawn would have required complete replacement of the carpets, a major repair to a hole in the ceiling over the laundry room, painting of the bedroom walls, and dead tree removal in the back yard – a much more costly investment than what we ended up with.) We have been told that home buying almost never goes this smoothly, and we truly believe that God’s hand was upon the entire process. As of this date (November 9), our former neighbors in the duplex are no closer to closing on a house then they were when they walked away from the one we bought. Their role in the process was essential, and we are praying that the Lord will lead them to the right place in the fullness of time.