A CALL

Richard has received a Call from Redeemer Lutheran Church, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to be their Pastor. We have had a whirlwind of activity since receiving the Call. The first thing was to receive the actual documents, then Richard announced to the congregation here in Nipigon that he had received the Call and requested the following Sunday off to allow us to travel to Prince Albert (PA)to see if we called find ourselves a home.

We left Nipigon on Thursday, October 30th, arriving in PA Friday afternoon. We had contacted a Real Estate agent earlier in the week , we gave him a quick phone call to confirm our arrival and see about viewing houses on Saturday and Sunday. Not being familiar with PA we were reliant on our Agent to find suitable houses in safe areas. This left us with a lot of houses crossed off our list. The first house we entered, we loved. It was a two storey, 1912 built house. We just loved the character of the house. On first viewing we did not really notice how dirty the house is and how much need of TLC.

We viewed many more houses, most not really suitable mainly because they only had two bedrooms; having children with families we really did need at least three bedrooms. We did see a three bedroom house which would have been great, we were curious why it was priced so much lower than many other comparable houses we had viewed. Our agent talked with the current resident of the property we were soon enlightened why lower price. Right next door there was an apartment block with residents who would have made this a very undesirable neighbourhood.

We returned to the first house we had seen on several more occasions that weekend, we also included our host and hostess to view it with us. On the subsequent visits we began to see how dirty the house was and how much work there would be to bring the home back to it's original glory. Were we really up for this task? We decided to place an offer and see what happens.

We had constantly sought guidance from our Heavenly Father and felt this home was meant for us. We discussed our best offer, considering the work, condition, lack of utilities being on during the past several months, general neglect and lack of appliances, a suitable figure was arrived at, now all we had to do was wait. The offer was accepted with our two conditions; one being able to obtain a mortgage the other for us to arrange having the house inspected. Tuesday we were once again at the house discussing with our house inspector the possible problems. He was very thorough, the bottom line and main question; was there any major reason why we should walk away from this deal? His answer was no, but to realise there was a lot to be done, some items as soon as possible, but most could be completed over several years.

The final obstacle was our financing. This was our biggest frustration. We chose to deal with the Royal Bank, having dealt with them for a good number of years. Our first appointment was made on a day when the bank was closed. That's correct the central banking centre for the Royal Bank made us an appointment on the day that particular Branch was closed. More phone calls another appointment was booked for Tuesday. It wasn't until he had finished setting up our new bank account that he informed us he did not handle mortgage applications and would have to pass our paper work to their local RBC Mortgage Specialist. Now we were really beginning to worry. We were heading back home on Wednesday and we still did not know if we could get a mortgage in place by Nov 12th.

Thursday we were back home in Nipigon. We had not heard from our Mortgage agent so I phoned to see how things were moving along, only to be told she did not have enough documentation and could I fax some additional papers. My nerves were really frayed by this time. I faxed everything on Friday and then we waited. It was not until that evening Christine contacted us to inform us our mortgage had been approved. That was our final hurdle. We have a new home to move to in PA.

As you may well realise from reading this that Richard will be telling our congregation that he has accepted the Call to Prince Albert. Prince Albert congregation will also be told tomorrow that he has accepted their Call. All that is left to do is arranging the move and that will be another blog. Photo's of our new home will follow shortly. Oh and yes I did hand my letter of resignation in at work on Friday morning. I will work until November 28th.