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January 13 Home Sweet HomeOur prayers were answered… with perfect timing
Last week we discovered that the third apartment that we were promised in one building had fallen through which left Michelle and I heading back to square one in apartment hunting.
We had been searching for 2 months now and were really tired of being let down by false promises.
The only thing we could do now was start all over so we recruited two friends and set out to find a place to live. We checked the boards at the local shops for rooms to rent and ended up calling a realtor. Unfortunately there is a new practice among the professionals… they require 3,000 shillings just to show you around, which doesn’t guarantee that you will like anything you see. But we were desperate so we coughed up the money and headed west.
Joe (the realtor) took us to this apartment building in Dhagoretti, the break-in capital of Nairobi… a fact which was made very clear, very quickly by both of our helpers (Reagan and Mercy) that day. The apartment was really nice… very clean and spacious but the one available was ground floor… the least secure. We walked upstairs to check out the others, some of which were equipped with extra gates for more security. Still, these apartments were occupied. We told Joe our concerns and in typical salesman fashion he tried to sweet talk us into moving in on the ground floor till a place upstairs is available. But we stood our ground as two white girls living in an unsecure apartment in Dhagoretti would just be a downright irrational decision.
We told Joe that we needed him to keep looking for us… after all… we paid him, and then the 4 of us continued on our way. Reagan wanted us to see some places in Jamhuri, which backs on to the last bus stop in Kibera.
We headed there and were pleasantly surprised. There were lots of small apartment buildings and many new developments in the making. Small businesses made vegetable and necessity shopping easy and there were even a handful of other white people seen walking around that day. We looked around at various buildings, trying to spot which ones were curtain free – a sure sign of vacancy.
There were rent boards with available units listed, but again, you had to pay someone to look so we called up Joe and told him to focus on Jamhuri. We left it at that and the next few days I followed up with Joe and Reagan, who, along with Mercy, proved to be great choices for the role of ‘helpful apartment hunters’.
A few days later Michelle and I were in Kibera with a small med-team from the US, taking them to set up a clinic at New Adventures Primary school. Reagan was with us and got a call from a friend that knew someone who lived in Jamhuri and he was told that there was a place we could look at. We (Michelle, Reagan, Jason and I) headed over right away and were taken to a very large 2 bedroom apartment that had just become available the night before. It was nice but wasn’t clean or painted and the landlord was pushing us to make a decision because someone else wanted to put a deposit on it. Michelle and I didn’t feel right about the place so we declined.
Somehow, we roped these two men into showing us around to some other places that day and after seeing about 5 more places we stopped for lunch. While we were eating a woman who lived in one of the apartments came home. We hadn’t seen her place yet but she was needing to move out asap because she was already paying rent at a bigger place that she had been waiting for. She just needed someone to take over her lease here. Her name is Joyce and she took us up to see her place. We walked in and Michelle and I were immediately excited. The place was cozy, nice, clean and secure and best of all cheap AND available. We worked out the details with Joyce and she called the landlord to confirm everything was good. Within the next three days we had signed the lease, paid rent and moved in.
 Kind of a quick ending to a long drawn out process but it was definitely an amazing answer to prayer. This place is cheaper than any of the others we were supposed to move in to, has two bedrooms (the others only had one) and is a ten minute walk to Kibera.
Thank you to all who were praying for us to find a place.
We are finally in, un-packed and have already started back in to ministry… and are very, very excited! January 02 The housing situationJust a quick update...
We've been given the run-around.... again!
This is about the third time we've been given a move in date, the third time we've been shown a substitute apartment
and the third time we've been let down.
As of today we are back to the beginning with apartment hunting.
Michelle and I, being very frustrated, are finished with this current complex that has wasted over a month of our time in looking for accommodations.
Tomorrow morning we are going to look for a new place.
I don't know what to say other than we need prayers for this.
It's been a long tiring task and we are running out of time.
School starts back up on Monday (so Michelle has to be in Kibera 5 days a week)
and a new team is coming the end of January (so I need to be organizing ministry for them)
This is impossible for us to do with where we are staying currently.
Our friends' place is about an hour from the slum and we don't have a vehicle.
So please pray for us.... we need this to be settled soon.
I know God already has it worked out, but we need patience cause it's running thin. Christmas in NairobiThis Christmas was a celebration of firsts for me.
It was my first Christmas...
-outside of Canada
-without buying gifts for everyone
-without receiving gifts from everyone
-without snow
-without family
-without a feast
-without decorations
yet, it is a Christmas that I can easily call the most meaningful for me.
For years I've been asking God to show me what Christmas is really about.
I know it's not just presents and fancy meals but it's difficult to look past all the glamour into the heart of it.
This year, having being stricken of all the rituals and false reasons for celebrating, I was left with God.
And he is more than enough to be left with.
I celebrated this year with 2 friends by staying in, watching movies, chatting and having our own worship service on the 25th.
It's hard to put into words but we shared a feeling of peace and excitement, brokenness and restoration, newness and unity and God was definately with us.
It's a Christmas I will chase after, celebrate every day and one I won't ever forget. |
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