Moving again!

We are going to move again in July or August to another house in Cebu. This is the life of missionaries, I guess, be flexible and constantly on the go.

We knew before we came to Cebu that we will have to find another house to rent by the second part of year 2007. The missionaries who were staying in this house are going to come back from their furlough.

We started looking a few months ago, but it is hard to find a house that is fully furnished, in a safe area and within our price range. (We have raised $600 US for rent.)

Then God starts to work on our behalf, a chain of events happened.

Our mission organization owns a house in Cebu, it has been occupied by a missionary family until they went back to the U.S. about a year and a half ago on furlough. They were planning on coming back this June. While they were gone, the house was rented out to another missionary family from England, and we were friends with both families, in fact, the U.S. missionary family were our main contact in the U.S. before we came here.

Last week, we found out the U.S. missionary family is going to delay their time for coming back, however, the missionary family from England has already made plans to rent another house. Therefore, the missions' house will be vacant, which they don't really want to see happen, they would want to have someone live there, even just for keeping watch on the house.

We jumped on the opportunity and asked if we can move in. Sure enough, they are glad to have us live there. Not only that, since the U.S. missionary family still have most of their household items stored in their house, the house comes furnished, the U.S. missionary family is willing to let us use some of their household items also.

Because the house was owned by our mission organization, we will only need to pay a much lower amount of rent on the house. This house is HUGE. It is a three bedrooms and a kitchen that is bigger than the whole living area in our townhouse in Mundelein, Illionis. It also has a seperate maid's quarter, which most missionaries who stayed there used as their office. It also have a very open living room and a huge playroom. The outside has a fenced in yard also. It will surely be more space than we need, but we love the space, though we will work on updating the house a bit, which the missions also welcomes.

Interestingly, when we were in that house last time visiting the missionary family from England, Kioni asked if we can live in that house. (That was three weeks before all these events happened.) When I asked Kioni why she liked that house, she said because it was big and there were a lot of space to run around. At that time, I told her we couldn't move into that house, because our friends were living in there. One month later, I told her we are going to move there, you should see the look in her eyes! She then started to ask me what furniture items and which toy animals are going. We then spent the next half hour making sure that every toy animal she likes is on the list.

We are again surprised by God's greatness and provision. It was just beyond what we anticipated.