My heart is overflowing with gratefulness to our great God. Here is our story...

When we saw the house that we have been attempting to rent, James and I both loved it. They were asking $100 reais more than our budget so we prayed right then and decided that we would offer R$1,000 and if God wanted us to live there He would open the doors. Since then, we have waited while the person before us was rejected, turned in all of our documents, striving to provided all that we could to establish our income. (Since we are foreigners, all of our documents are different than the "norm," make the process a little more difficult.) When James turned in our offer on the house, the realtor told us that was the same offer that the people before us gave and it was rejected. We didn't change our offer because we believed this was what God was leading us to do.

If we were to get this house, God would get the glory. He would work out details that were humanly impossible.

Yesterday we recieved word that David found a house 8 blocks from "our house" and his offer was accepted. At the same time recieved word that the owner of "our house" would not go down a dime in what he was asking. We also learned that the house cost R$1,100 plus R$84.00 for tax plus an unknown amount of fire insurance per month. This would put us more than R$200 more than our budget and the amount we had prayerful set before God. We were strongly encouraged to just pay what they were asking.

James and I were both in agreement that we had prayed and felt peace about the R$1,000 offer and if God wanted us there He would do it. If He didn't want us there, He had a better place in mind.

We had not recieved an offical word of rejection on our offer so we continued praying for the Lord's leading and direction.

At 7:00 p.m. last night, David found another house, in the same neighborhood, that would work prefectly for our family. They were asking R$850 per month, well within our budget. He put our name on that house to reserve it for us.

We are still waiting for word on the first house, but we are rejoicing because we have seen God's hand guiding and providing. God used that first house to direct our focus to this neighborhood. There are about 9 large neighborhoods that make up the city of San Jose. We were overhelmed in trying to decided where to live and start our ministry. But, God faithfully directed us to this area.

We may still get that first house, but if we don't it seems that God has already provided another house for us to rent.

When we came to Brazil our goal was to magnify Christ. It is so easy to "trust Christ" for a while and then when things don't seem to be going our way, to take back control and say, "well, God, I really wanted things to work out this way and since you aren't providing, I'll just finish working things out." We believe that Christ will be glorified as we step back and let Him work His plan in and around us.

Pray for us that we will continue to trust Him and not run ahead of Him.

House #1



House #2