After several months of ongoing health issues (asthma, persistent coughing, and always falling sick), returning home to Australia for three months over Christmas, brought great relief, as well as a clue. My suspicions were confirmed when on returning to our home in Wheaton, I was back to being sick again. Something in our home was making me sick. After some prayful investigations we became almost certain that the problem lied within the centralised heating and cooling system.
Leaving winter behind, meant that we no longer needed to use the heating anymore, and that we could have our windows open. Praise God, I have not been sick now for over a month. But the problem would still face us as soon as the weather demanded our need for heating or cooling. So surely this old house simply needed it's ducts and vents cleaned out right? If only it were that simple... Last summer they discovered that there was asbestos used in the joins of the duct work, and it was deemed that the ducts should never ever be disturbed again. So cleaning them was out of the question.
A few weeks ago, we received from the college, notice to vacate. We'd had had our turn and it was time to make the place available for another international student family. Now we had to look to God to work a miracle. How would we ever find a well maintained, affordable place to live that was within walking distance to the college, with enough rooms to house our growing family? We had been paying a subsidised rent rate (compared to the rest of the Wheaton rental market) for a furnished house, and all our utilities included. So in order to maintain our current level of expenditure, we would need to take a huge step down. Obviously we would need to move out of a house and into an apartment, but there were virtually no three bedroom apartments around. We quickly became discouraged with the available options listed within our budget. Everything was either too small and run down, or a long way out.
A day or so later, it was Jordan's birthday, and we thought we'd take a walk to try out his new bike. We aimlessly wandered around and ended up at a nearby playground. Here Clayton got talking with another young father who he had shared a class with a little while ago. Somehow, it came up in conversation that there was a 3 bedroom townhouse vacant next door to them that was in his opinion; pretty nice. He said that the only problem was that it was furnished, which would be a problem if we had furniture, but since we had none, this would be a huge blessing. He had the keys to the place and was able to show us around. We were impressed. It was neat and clean, the bathrooms were tastefully re-modelled and it even had a dishwasher!
We had tried to call the property's owner, and had only been able to leave voice mail. In that long week of in-between-time waiting, we had started to conclude that perhaps the place was not for lease. One morning while Judah was at school, I drove around with Nathan and Jordan in the car, looking desperately to see if I might stumble across any "for rent" signs. Nathan said that he would like to move into a new place that had a playground. I told him that he'd better pray to God for that one. With that, he said, "Well let's do it now!" and prayed, "God, I pray that we could live in a place that is cool for kids. In Jesus' name, Amen."
Almost a week after leaving a message with property's owner, our call was returned and after a long telephone conversation with the owner of the property it soon became obvious that God had led us to our next home. Not only had she meticulously maintained the property, but she had recently gone to the expense of having a brand new, high efficiency centralised heating and cooling system with (I might add) a hepa filtration system that would help remove dust and dirt from the air! She also explained that she had re-lined the walls and roof with a high grade insulation, that substantially improved the energy efficiency of the home and would subsequently reduce our utility expense. Without going into all of the other details, it was clear that this place had our name all over it. We just had to wait to hear back about the price.
After a lot of waiting, we finally had word on the price they were asking. To our disappointment, it was more than we could comfortably afford to pay. How could this be, that God would set us up in this way, but not come through with a good price. I mean it was a reasonable price (given what's out there) but we were kind of hoping for miraculously sweet deal. Clayton got back to the owner and essentially, counter offered. Because she really liked us and wanted to work with us, she and her husband came down dramatically in price and were able to offer us an excellent rate.
So, in a couple of weeks time, we will move into "a place that's cool for kids". Yes, it even has a decent playground out the back. Thank you God! Nathan's faith has been encouraged, and he is now praying for a baby sister! Actually he was praying for twins, but I told him that he needn't be greedy.
P.S. Interestingly, Clayton was talking to the previous tenant of our college home today, and he mentioned that one of his children also had inexplicable health problems along the same lines as mine throughout the time they were in the house which cleared up when they left. Nice to know that it was not all in my head.
