Life Stories: July 2006 Archives
This morning Jessica and I visited our third church in Missouri, and the first we've really liked: First Baptist Church of Harvester. The buildings were absolutely packed to the seams and the people were all friendly, energetic, and happy to be there.
We sat near the back and observed as inconspicuously as possible, but we were quickly drawn in to the heartfelt worship service. The songs were very contemporary and the musicians were skilled, but more importantly we could tell that the people at the church were excited about praising God and glad to be together.
We weren't keen on hugging people near us during the greeting before the sermon started, but everyone was friendly enough and we escaped with hand-shaking. The sermon itself was very relevant and the pastor was passionate in his love for the people in the community and for our country. During communion I almost cried when they sang "That Old Rugged Cross", which is one of my favorite songs.
So, we're definitely going to visit again and probably check our their membership classes. On first blush we really liked the church, and we're very excited to meet some more of the people and see how we can get involved in service. The people looked like us: a lot of young people, casually dressed, and eager to serve God. The bulletin showed a lot of stuff going on each week, so we should be able to find some places to plug in. Let's see what happens!
I'm blogging this from my Cingular 8100 phone/pda. There's a "severe thunderstorm warning" here now, but the power is still on thankfully. In other news... uh... the end.
Well another storm this morning knocked out power at the hotel again, but it just came back on so we'll be able to sleep in conditioned air. Whew. We were supposed to do our home inspection for the new house today, but we couldn't because there wasn't any power to test the appliances, so we had to reschedule.
It's easy to get frustrated with delays, discomfort, and inconvenience, but just turning on the news reminds me that there are people in far worse circumstances than us. Fawzi Shobokshi, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United Nations, is blabbering on accusing Israel of purposefully assaulting Lebanese civilians without even mentioning the endless terror attacks the Israelis have suffered. We're really blessed to be in middle America with no more worries than whether our wireless internet connection will work.
It's lunch time on my first Monday at work, and it looks like they won't have a problem with me blogging a bit on my own time, so that's nice. Everyone here seems great, and the work looks like it will be fascinating.
DeoDuce and I got the paperwork signed to extract ourselves from the stupid Lake House purchase, and we'll be writing up an offer this evening for the house we want now. This whole process has been very educational, and we're actually very thankful that we didn't get the Lake House. It isn't really what we need, and this other house will be much more practical and enjoyable in the long term. I'll be posting information about the Lake House's listing agent tonight, just so everyone knows not to ever do business with her.
Sorry about all the presumably-boring life story posts, but I've hardly got time to read the news much less think about it.
I had my first day at work today, and everyone seemed very nice and well organized. It looks like the work will be interesting and I think I'm going to enjoy everything. I'm going to try working earlier than I have in the past, hopefully from 8am to 5:30pm, with every other Friday off. It's called a 9-4-9 schedule, meaning that I'll work nine hours a day for nine days, and take the tenth off (technically, I'll only have to work eight hours on one of those nine days). That will give me 26 more days off work than on a traditional 40-hour work week, which sounds very appealing. I could work 10 hours for for days a week, but that might be too much. We'll see.
We've got another house that we're very interested in, and we're hoping to make an offer on it this weekend. As soon as we get the contracts signed that withdraw us from our existing offer, we'll have more information on the real estate agent who screwed us.
This week has been incredibly draining. We moved some stuff into our house on Monday night when we arrived, and then spent Tuesday hanging curtains and fixing the place up. Then, on Wednesday we found out that the appraisal didn't match the asking price. We were agonized over whether or not we should pay more than the appraised value, but we decided not to have our furniture delivered. This evening we sent a letter to the sellers telling them that if they didn't lower the price we'd back out of the deal, and they said they wouldn't, so we exercised our appraisal contingency and moved back out of the house and took all our stuff -- including our cars -- to a hotel. So now we need to cancel the house insurance and all the utilities, as well as find a new house. We've got a great lead that we're looking into, but we're just unbelievably exhausted. Plus, tomorrow is my first day at my new job.
Anyway, that only begins to cover the drama. The listing agent apparently lied to us about various lawsuits that had been filed within the subdivision that would directly affect the value of the property we were going to buy. She lied to us about having another offer on the house and tried to pressure us into moving quickly. She assured us that the house would appraise for the right amount and tried to convince us to drop the appraisal rider before we moved in. Etc. What a nightmare. Anyway, we're back in a hotel again, with our dog, and just hoping to make the next attempted purchase work better than this one did. Pray for us!
After two-and-a-half days on the road we're finally in Missouri, though not yet to our home. We're spending the night in Springfield at a very nice Best Western that actually has the internet access it promised in the ads! We drove all the way here from Tucumcari, NM, and we're pretty whipped. The bright side is that we'll be spending tomorrow night in our new house! Yay!
Oh, does anyone have a great idea for how to get a large quantity of cash in a city where we don't have a bank account? I've never used Western Union, but is that the kind of thing it does? I cleverly packed my checkbook onto the moving truck, but we might need to pay a month's worth of rent on the house we're buying so that we can move in early.
Missouri is a beautiful state. It's fun to watch the terrain change from the high deserts of the mountain states, to the greener plains of Texas, and then to the rolling, wooded hills of Oklahoma and Missouri. The trip has been rather nice, but I'm more than ready to be done with it and off the road for a few days. I start my new job on Friday!
So the day has finally come... the day the Williams leave Los Angeles. It's been almost 30 years since my parents arrived here from St. Louis (by way of Des Moines) and now my wife and I are heading back. I can only imagine how awesome Los Angeles was in its glory days, and even now I feel a pang of regret for leaving my city, my family, my church, and all my friends behind. Still, I know we're following God's will for our family, and I'm extremely excited about my new job, my new house, and all the new friends we're going to make. It's the circle of life....
Yesterday was an adventure. The packers were coming to put all our stuff in boxes, but when we woke up there was no hot water for the shower. Strange. Let's go outside and see... oh nice, the water heater has collapsed into a pile of jagged rusty metal. So in addition to everything else we were doing yesterday, I had to purchase and install a new water heater (with enormous help from my step-dad Clayton). So it goes.
Today they come to haul the boxes and furniture and cars away, and then we ride into the sunrise in our rented Toyota Sienna packed to the gills with everything we'll need until they deliver our belongings at some indefinite time in the future. I'll try to post from the road if we can find WiFi hotspots, but no guarantees. See you soon!
Click below to see some pictures of our new house in St. Charles.
Wow, it's way hotter in Los Angeles today than it was in St. Louis last week.
So. Hot.
