This week some people paid us a special visit, all the way from Brea, California! After a jam-packed couple of very busy days of speaking at conferences and other Christian engagements here in Sydney, Jim's former boss and his wife met with us for dinner last night. Though it was a brief visit, we were so blessed and encouraged by the depth of their godliness. They also brought with them lots of "love" letters from the staff at ECCU!
During our short time of prayer together, my heart swelled with thankfulness and humbleness. We were tremendously moved by their gesture of love, generosity, and care. Being so far away from our loved ones, sometimes we forget that we are not lonesome sojourners. We have many people, whom we’ve known for years and whom we haven’t even met, praying for us with the same hope that we pray, which is for all of us to be the best representatives of Christ’s heart, hands and feet. Thank you M & C (and everyone back home) for your love! We long to hear from you more.
This past weekend was pretty "memorable". It started off on Friday afternoon when I decided to accompany a friend who wanted to check out a dog-friendly park/cafe in
However, the drama continued as soon as we got home. After giving Buddy a quick bath in the backyard, we noticed that the hot-water tank was leaking. So we turned it off and said, “No worries. We can call the plumber tomorrow (Saturday).” Tomorrow came and we couldn’t get a hold of our real estate agent whom we had to notify first. She was at an auction selling a property and wouldn’t be able to get back to us until she was done. To make the story short, the earliest that a plumber could be scheduled to come was Monday.
Still, the fiasco didn’t end there. After dinner, we were cooking some food for Sunday’s lunch for our church gathering and, forgetting that we didn’t have hot water, Jim drained some beef fat down the sink. He doesn’t tell me this important fact until later when I was about to do the dishes and realized the sink was clogged due to the fat that had solidified in the pipes. We plunged it, poured hot-boiling water, plunged it again, poured Drano, and plunged it some more with no success of unclogging the sink. We were stuck with dirty dishes and pots piled up on the kitchen counter. And the cherry on top of the icing of this disaster-cake was that we had to boil some water over the stove to bathe ourselves.
Thankfully, the chaos was over by Saturday night. The next morning we had a wonderful time of devotion with our
Have you ever had a crazy weekend like that? 
Renting a living space in
2) Competition: As mentioned, everyone wants to be closer to the city, so there is a lot of competition in trying to find a place to rent in a lot of suburbs surrounding the city. The way it works here is, a real estate agency places adds for a rental along with the time the place will be open for viewing (what they call inspection) which usually falls on a Saturday. Then, the people who are interested will show up on the viewing day, only to get there and realize that there are tens of other people interested in the same place. Pretty normal at first impression since everyone has the right to view/inspect a place to rent. However, the crazy thing is that some people that are desperate to get a place will actually offer to pay more than the asking price of rent, and sometimes come with their deposit check plus 6 months of rent ready to hand it to the agent! Of course, it is highly illegal to do so but it happens. Check out the line of people waiting to view a place!
3) Discrimination: Rental candidates can be discriminated based on their race, marital status, income, age, and on a combination of some or all of these factors. One phenomenon that is pretty common here is that a lot of foreign students will rent a one or two bedroom apartment unit to share with 10 plus people! Sometimes a group of foreign students will put their veranda for rent! You can imagine what can end up happening in some cases: not only do they end up living out of their suitcases due to lack of space, but some may end up trashing the place (as in photo below), thus, making it difficult for other foreign students to rent. Foreign students aren’t the only ones that have it hard. If you’re a young married couple starting life in one income while one of you is still going to school, it is unlikely you’ll be given the keys to a place.
All this to say that we are SO blessed and thankful to have a place to live that is in an ideal location for our ministry purposes, and that is comfortable and ideal for the two of us. When we look back to the timing and the circumstances surrounding how we found and got this place to live, we thank God for it.
