Life has a funny way of being unpredictable. Just when you think you have it all figured out something changes. I fully believe God knows what he is doing, even when I have no idea of where he is leading me. Marc and I have always been led; led to move to across the country to California, led to move back, led to sell or give away everything we thought we wanted, led to travel in 400 square feet with our children to visit every state, led to keep traveling even when we reached our goal, led to change our RV, led to travel to Europe, led to cross the Atlantic on a cruise ship. All of these situations have been scary, but have brought me peace and joy. Our God is glorious!
This year began like several of the past years. We wintered in Florida with our friends; homeschooling, full time traveling, Christians. We had reservations to fly to Japan in early April and spend a month there and then make the transpacific passage back to the west coast. Well God had other plans as I am sure he did for you. This will be a time we will remember for the rest of our lives.
We quarantined in the Carolinas near my brother and our friends. We spent a lot of time together just the four of us. Somewhere in one of our conversations about when we would be able to travel internationally Cali asked if we could spend Christmas in Northeastern Pennsylvania near our family. That led me to thinking….maybe we could rent a house for a few months. Living in an RV in the cold really can be difficult. We spend lots of time outside and in the cold that really isn’t feasible. I prayed about it for several days and then mentioned it to Marc. In a day or two he sent me a listing for a house, not to rent, but a foreclosure to buy.
We had talked about working on a house with our kids. Teaching them about the things that need to be done in a house and working on remodeling together. As soon as I saw the street name it led me to pray even more. It was on Grace Drive. God has given me so much grace over the years. Grace Drive is about 2 miles from the house I grew up in. The house where I spent most of the first 29 years of my life, in the town where I never thought I would live again. The house was in foreclosure. The bank owned it. I messaged my cousin Donna, who is a realtor and asked her about the house. The housing market was just opening back up after the quarantine. She had not viewed it, but went over and looked at it with us on the phone. It seemed like a good house. It had been empty for over a year and a half. The electric had been turned off so we didn’t really know if anything worked. I asked my mom and Eddie to go see the house and they did the next day.
We decided to put in an offer on the house with out ever even seeing it in person or knowing if anything really worked. When Donna went to put in the offer she couldn’t find the listing. After some searching she found that it had gone to auction that day. We decided to put in a bid. It was scary bidding on a house we had never seen, but the four of us felt like it was the right thing to do. We made sure the kids understood this would be a lot of work, but they were in for the challenge. We put in our bid right away and we were the high bidders (or maybe the only crazy bidders.)
Another reason the house may have not had many inquiries, other than the fact that it was being sold as is and nothing could be tested, the assessed taxes were high. We have had the house appraised and are working to get the taxes lowered. Whatever the reason I am thankful that at a time when houses are being sold in hours and days instead of weeks, this house was waiting for us to take a chance on it.
About a week later we left North Carolina and moved to a campground in southern Pennsylvania. We made a day trip to Tunkhannock to see the house on Grace Drive. My cousin Donna met us there. To my surprise one of the first things she said to me was, “Can you believe it’s on Grace Drive?” She went on to tell me about how having grace had changed her life for the better.
We arrived in Tunkhannock with our RV on the 20th of July and worked almost everyday afternoon for three or four hours on the house for the next two weeks. It is a good house, but does have so many things that need to be done. It has beautiful hardwood floors throughout the house which I love. Cali and Marcus scrubbed the walls, ripped down wallpaper and vacuumed. Most of the house has not been painted since it was built in 1972. So far we have used almost10 gallons of primer on the walls and ceilings and aren’t even half done. We have had 22 trees taken down and are working on cleaning up the yard.
What are our plans for the house? Well only God really knows, but we plan to get the inside functional and move all of our items that have been in storage for the last nine years in. We really don’t remember what we saved or why. We are going to spend the fall as house dwellers living near the kid’s grandmas and soaking up as much family time as we can…. But we already have plans to head to Florida after Christmas.
If you would like to follow along on our project house you can check out Cali’s posts.
unpredictableperryscontinued 