I’ve been kind of terrible about blogging this summer. I had all of these dreams at the beginning of my break of all of the wonderful posts I was going to write about the exciting things happening in our lives, and then the sand shifted under our feet and things have changed so rapidly that I can barely keep up in real life, let alone blog life!
However, I promised you that I would tell you the story about finding renters for our cute, little bungalow. I am going to be vague in some areas for confidentiality reasons, but I do want to share how awesome our God is!
In case you don’t know our whole house story, you might want to read Ongoing House Saga Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
So, we didn’t actually get a For Rent sign in our yard until the beginning of May. As we started making repairs, we realized that there actually was quite a few things that we didn’t want to mess with later so our to-do list kept growing. By the time we got our listing online, stuck the sign in the yard, and began a Facebook campaign, the house looked pretty spiffy and we were pretty sure that someone would snatch it up in a heartbeat.
Literally only hours after listing the house, people did start calling. That was a very nervous time for us, because we have never done this before and we worried so much about doing something wrong. A few days into it, however, we realized that it’s simply talking with people over the phone, showing the house, and getting to know them. We did have some rough experiences and what we discovered is this: people who call just from seeing the house and sign are the least informed and typically the least qualified. Also, the people who only see the sign without seeing pictures, the price, etc. can be the most rude and demanding. I know that sounds awful, but I talked to three different people who either asked for me to take $200-300 off the rent, just outright yelled about the price, or left nasty messages when I didn’t call back within a few hours. Some of those phone calls made me want to just yank the sign up and call it quits.
But we didn’t. Because most of the calls were with really amazing people who have really interesting stories. That’s the fun part…getting to hear about other people’s lives. It was interesting, too, because the four “finalists” for our house were all people moving to Indiana from out of state. I could really identify with that kind of change and upheaval, and enjoyed hearing the reasons for their move (although one family was moving because of the devastation from tornadoes in Missouri…that was difficult to listen to). We also got to share our story, because people obviously want to know why we’ve moved out of the house. In the process of sharing, we gained some new prayer warriors, which was a blessing that I never anticipated! Anyway, once we had narrowed it down, we began to pray like mad for the people who had actually submitted applications and paid for the credit check (that’s how you know they’re serious).
And God did what God does best…He made it clear. We noted that it would have been too much of a financial burden on one applicant, another applicant never responded to any of our subsequent calls/emails, one selected a home closer to work, and the other hung in there until the end. The couple who now lives in our house was really more than just good on paper (and they were), but we really clicked with them.
The first time we met them, we just felt great about them living there and we were actually really excited for them to move into the house and call it home. There are some very strong personality similarities between us and them (and one concern was whether or not there would be room for all of their books…um, hello, I’m pretty sure we could be best friends in another life), and we just really felt an overwhelming YES for them. They had specifically chosen Danville because of its location and quaintness, and they love old houses (score). While they couldn’t move as soon as we had originally hoped, we felt that having good, solid renters was so worth the wait. As the process continued, we just felt more and more at peace, and by the time we handed over our keys, we were nearly jumping for joy! God had provided not just a smooth process, but renters that we feel are perfect for our house.
So, last week they brought a moving truck full of their possessions from the East Coast and began to make our little house their home, and we couldn’t be more excited. We pray a lot that they will be blessed by our house and feel very comfortable in our neighborhood. While the future is very uncertain for us and for them, we do know that for now, our prayers have been answered and our house is in good hands.
