Why Move?

Tom on finding our house 3 yrs ago

I was sitting on a front stoop looking at the house across the way that was currently sitting in the sun. I was imagining living there. The kids were playing on a rubble pile with a couple neighborhood kids. A lady was cutting up fruit behind me and offering me a constant stream of information and ideas. We were waiting for the owner of the house across the street to come and show us the house. I finally called the house owner, she gave some vague excuses about waiting for a car. So we waited some more. In the meantime, I had heard about the fruit-cutting lady’s personal life story, her living situation, the situation of her sibling and general information about the neighborhood. She was very excited about the idea of having us as neighbors, though she warned us that the owner might try to charge us too much. She ended up showing us around her own house and had us walk around the outside of the house above her that belongs to her sibling. After almost an hour, I decided to take the kids home. We hadn’t seen the house we wanted to, but it had been a thought-provoking trip nonetheless.

We’ve begun house hunting again, but we’re still not sure that we will move— it all depends on if we can find a house that is better than our current one. Here are the factors that most weigh on us…

Our boys playing in kids (messy) room

Noise— this might be our biggest reason for wanting to move. We live in a noisy house. We are in a central location (great for events and spontaneous gatherings). There’s always noise. There’s the roosters, the cat fights, the call to prayer blared from next door, the weddings, the political events, the fighting neighbors, the mass of kids, crowds worked up over the latest controversy or piece of gossip. We’re surrounded by lots of people. At team meetings we often had to raise our voices in order to hear each other. A crowd of shouting people will be gathered by our doorstep and we don’t bat an eye anymore. It’s normal. So the question lingers…what if we lived on a street that was a little quieter?

Landlady— most island houses are owned by women (it is a matrilineal society). Our current landlady is generally nice enough, but she has been a little stingy and hard-to-deal with about problems with the house and questions of money. We’ve had to deal with lots of landlords with our team’s houses, so we know she’s been difficult.  What if we had a landlady who was easier to work with?

Size— Our current house feels big. It only has three bedrooms and our three kids share 1 room, but all the rooms and the layout feel big. Because of the layout and the noise, it is hard to hear someone calling out in another part of the house (which is a liability in a culture where you keep the front door open when you are home). What if we lived a house that felt a little smaller?

Neighbors- We have lots of neighbors. We have made lots of relationships. When we go outside, a crowd of kids call out our name and ask to play on our porch. But when we try to have serious conversations with our neighbors, they tend to glaze over. There hasn’t been much interest to go deep (people from further away show interest, but our immediate neighbors don’t). What if we lived in a place where our immediate neighbors showed interest in talking to us about deeper things?  Moving could also bring about more conversations with old neighbors as now we would be “coming to visit” rather than just crossing the street.

Cool— This is one area where our current house can’t be beat. We live in a cool house (as in not hot). It makes it kind of cave-ish— but we don’t mind. Better dark than hot. It’s true that the building next door has been built up so we don’t get the same breezes we used to, but still we don’t complain. What if we move and the new house is really hot?

Water/Electricity— Water and electricity is a problem all over the islands— we all have daily cuts. But some places have it worse than others. We have it pretty good— we can count on having both water and electricity for at least a little bit every day.  What if we moved to a house and they ended up having multiple day outages of water or electricity?

We trust that if we are supposed to move that God will make it clear.

Let the packing begin

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful that God placed us here for these past 3.5 years. Even if we end up moving, it has been a great season of living in this community. Friends have been good about telling us about housing possibilities in the neighborhood. We’ve started packing up our stuff for storage (we still have over a month, but we’re realizing that it will be quite a job)— our neighborhood shop-owners have been very helpful finding us boxes.


PRAYERS REQUESTED
We’re getting housing leads but haven’t found much time to actually visit and see houses. Pray we’d find or make the time. Megan and our youngest leave tomorrow— it will take them two days to arrive at the place where he will have surgery. His surgery is scheduled for Thursday. Pray for our family as we are split in two for the coming week and a half (Tom will stay on the islands with the older two). Pray for our son (3.5 yrs) that he would be brave at the hospital, that the surgery would go smoothly and that there would be no complications. It is just another week before the month of fasting begins— start praying now for this special time of opportunity and increased scrutiny for us and our friends on the islands.