Newsletters

June 1999

House Wars, Episode I: The Menacing Buyers

A short time ago, in a city not so far away. . .

. . . Buyers roamed the land, checkbook and paperwork in hand, with a Realtor at their side. They came upon waiting sellers, overwhelming them with offers on their houses. We entered this land of buyers two weeks ago as we began our search for a house.

We are nearing the end of our support-raising time and so are able to begin seriously looking for a house. We spent six days in Ann Arbor doing that. What a story we came away with!

We arrived on Tuesday and saw four houses with our Realtor. Those were the only homes left over from the homes listed in the Sunday paper. Unfortunately none of those houses were what we are looking for. We were getting kind of worried, but our Realtor assured us that we had plenty of time to find a house and that more would go on the market on Sunday.

Come Sunday there were a number of houses for sale and we found a few that we wanted to look at. One of the open houses was the right size house at the right price and in a neighborhood that we really like. The open house was from 2-4. We walked through the house twice and decided we would put an offer on it. Our Realtor told the lady selling the house (it was for sale by owner) that we would be back with an offer. We knew the house across the street wasn’t in as nice of a condition as this house and had sold for $7000 more than what this lady was asking. You must realize that in Ann Arbor most houses sell for more than the asking price since it is such a seller’s market. So we decided to offer $5000 more than the asking price. We got back to her house at 3:15 with the offer. When our Realtor knocked on the door, she came out and said that she had just accepted an offer. She seemed shocked to hear how much we had offered, but although she hadn’t signed the other offer and it was only for the asking price, she felt she couldn’t do that to those people and accept our offer instead.

Quite a crazy experience! Our Realtor was as shocked as we were. I even cried! (Shelly, not Nate!) At the time it was not much comfort, but we do realize that for some reason God did not want us to get that house. So, we go on trusting Him to provide the house He wants for us at the right time.

We will be going back to Ann Arbor for Sunday trips every couple of weeks until we find a house. Hopefully we won’t have many more stories like this one! 

Support Raising Stats

A quick look at what we’ve done

A lot of what we are doing while raising our support  must be carefully recorded in statistics that we send to our support coach each week. (Our support coach keeps up-to-date on how we are doing and calls every few weeks to offer advice and encouragement.)

We thought you might be interested to hear some of our statistics. These are for the entire time we have spent raising our support, since last August.

It is amazing to see what God has done! We want to thank each and every one of you for the ways you have been supporting us. Your prayers are greatly valued and we have seen God provide for us in many unexpected ways. Your faithful financial support has made it possible for us to concentrate our efforts on getting our support raised without having to juggle other jobs. Thank you so much! Your support will enable us to reach many student at the University of Michigan with the good news of Jesus Christ.  n

Praise and Prayer

We are very thankful to have 84% of our support raised! This puts us in a very good position going into the summer. We will continue to work hard at raising our final monthly support throughout this summer. There is a conference for all Campus Crusade staff in the United States in Fort Collins, Colorado July 17–29. We hope to be done raising support before this conference and we also hope to move sometime after this conference so that we can get settled before our planning and preparation begins for the fall semester mid-August.

Please begin praying for the students that Shelly and I will have an opportunity to share the gospel with and disciple this coming school year. Pray that God would open their hearts to receive Him and grow in their relationship with Him.

We praise God for helping us to keep our relationship strong during our five years of marriage. Our anniversary will be on June 25.  n

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