Saturday, May 31, 2014

Apartment: Found!

Wow. When friends said things can move fast in China, they were right. We found our apartment today! Our God answers prayer.

Both Friday and today, we walked around for 5 hours each afternoon, looking at apartments. Some were obvious no's, others were ones to consider. But none clicked like the last one we looked at...

We tried to see it earlier. We waited at the door for a while, finally sitting down, at which point the neighbors invited us in. The mom spoke English and they had a 17-month-old son, so it was fun to converse with her. She was really friendly too, so the thought of possibly having her next door was great. So we waited and waited, only to finally learn that there was a mix-up with who the key was given to, and the owner wouldn't be back for another hour. So, these sweet new friends gave us a tour of their place, saying the set-up of the other one was similar.

Instead of waiting for the owner to arrive, we walked to see another place. Only to find that the owner of this one had left, since we'd waited so long at the other place. Oh well - we hadn't really been interested in that one anyways. So we walked back to the other place... Hopefully it'd be worth it.

And it was!! Right away we both felt that this was it. Open, clean rooms, airy and cheerful, with more modern furnishings . The master bedroom even had a more western-style mattress - not thin and hard like all the others we'd seen. It fit pretty much everything we hadn't liked about the other apartments: the tv's were small, so they'd fit easily in a closet (we didn't watch tv in the US so we don't plan to start here!). The 3rd bedroom didn't have a bed so we'll have more space (one guest bed should be enough!). The furniture already had guard things on the corners because the previous renters had a baby - it's like it has been prepared for us! Little things like the curtains in the living room and kitchen just made me happy... It should only take Ryan 5 minutes to get to work on an E-bike (kind of like a motorcycle but cheaper) and is close enough that I could walk it! And to top it all off, we've already met the neighbors and at least one speaks great English!

The owners are also really nice. They teach at the university (which is across the street) and want to make sure things are kept nice. Having seen many very dirty apartments as we searched for one, I'm happy to keep this one nice as we find it so! They're very caring and told us to call if we needed anything and promised to fix a few things that were broken. We are blessed!

The only downside: it's on the 3rd floor and there's no elevator. So, we'll get nice and strong over the next few years! ;)

Knowing that our favorite from the previous day had JUST been taken by someone else, we went ahead and told the owner it was a deal. We'll sign the papers and put the down payment down on Monday.

We have a home! I nearly skipped as we made the trek back to the subway. I did sing with all my might "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation!" Ryan accompanied with some cool clapping patterns, as he'd completely lost his voice. Walking for hours and talking with people isn't the best treatment for a bad sore throat... my man is amazing.


We celebrated at McDonalds - the only thing by the subway. And never had those Golden Arches looked so good!

As we rode towards our hotel, I leaned close to Ryan and said, "I can picture it now! We have a home!"

And boy does it feel good.

Thank you Lord! And thank you to everyone who was praying - we could definitely feel it!

5 comments:

  1. So happy for the three of you. I have been praying. We do serve an awesome God! Can't wait to see the pictures as you make your your new home a Home!

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  2. This is Helen-
    God is really working! Isn't it amazing? I hope Ryan gets his voice back soon.

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  3. So so glad for you! :-) We've been praying and will continue to!

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