No Longer Homeless.

As I am typing I have oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. I was hoping to use mini oreos but apparently everyone knew about the 99 cents deal at Krogers because they were completely out by the time I got there. Oh well, humongous cookies it is I guess.

On another note...I finally have a place to live. It was a long and somewhat frustrating ordeal but I'm thankful that God allowed it to be a not so smooth process. Erin and I were able to find an apartment pretty soon after I got here; rent was $945/month for 1290 sq ft., a basketball and tennis court, a pool, and the guy was in a hurry to move out so he was offering to pay us $500 upfront when we signed the lease. It was a great deal and I thought that this must be what God was giving to me. The only problem was that we wouldn't be able to move in until the end of the month. I'd already been staying at the Yong's place for a week or so and I didn't want to trouble them any longer so I had to figure out where I could stay until I could moved in. Then I was reminded of a friend that lived around the area so I asked if I could crash at her place for a couple days, she said yes. I thought that things couldn't get any better.

Yea, well God had other plans for me and shortly after we turned in our application we found out that something went wrong with the guy's mortgage at the condo he had just purchased so he wouldn't move out of the apartment until Sept 27th. This left us with two options, we could either wait until the end of September to move in or we could move on to another place. We decided to start over but since Rice and UH are both starting in the next week or so apartments were being rented out fast and we had a hard time finding places within my price range. Then on Wednesday we went to look at a townhouse and we arrived with checkbook in hand ready to make a deposit if the place was decent. It was. But, the landlords weren't willing to accept our offer because they had two other people coming later that they and I think that wanted to see if they could get a better contract from them. I left feeling really frustrated at God for making we wait so long to find a place.

At this time I was reminded by a friend of a very simple lesson that the Lord was trying to teach me, to place my trust in Him. It's a simple idea yet a difficult one. I was reminded of the saying, "Either He is the Lord of all, or He is not our Lord at all" and of the theme of WCCC this year that Christ is to be all and in all. These two phrases humbled me immediately because I realized that all this time I had not allowed Him to be the Lord of all in my life. It has only been a couple weeks since WCCC and God gave me a simple test of whether or not I had come to understand what I had heard and it was clear that I had not. So often we hear these ideas and phrases and we agree with them in our head, yet we fail to make them a reality in our lives.

I thank God for giving me this bump in the road so early on in my arrival to Houston because I know that there will be many more to come. The school I will be working in will not be in an easy environment, many of these students come from broken families and they grow up in a culture where education is not highly valued. If I can't trust God in everything right now, how will I be able to trust in Him when things actually get tough?

I move in August 25th so after I get settled I will post pictures. Can't wait to make my trip to IKEA!