First of all, I want to apologize for the information gap this past month! So much has been going on that we have not had the time to eat or write. But we are now seeing an end to the busyness, and so want to fill you in on all the amazing and sometimes frustrating times we have encountered.
I had previously briefly mentioned that we had been served an eviction notice by the new owner of our funky but wonderful house in the Rugando area. Our landlord had been leasing the home from the new owner’s brother for the past 8 years, and had sub-leased to us under very generous terms, but we discovered only recently that this new owner had been trying to take control of the house for at least 6 years, and had finally won the long court battle. His motives for evicting us were unclear, but we were given 2 weeks (to March 18) to be gone. We initially assumed that he simply wanted to renegotiate the contract, but after 1 week of unsuccessfully trying to even contact him, we realized that we had to find a new home, now with only 1 week to go.
So, we began packing up our household items, not yet knowing where we were going to put it. This is when we began to see some wonderful events that could only have been orchestrated by our Heavenly Father. First of all, our current landlord, who was living in India as the Rwandan ambassador to that country, was called back to Rwanda to meet with the President and his cabinet the very week that we were to be leaving the house; with our eviction his contract was also voided and he would have to move out all the furniture that we had been using. Secondly, we were offered the use of a house just 3 doors away which had been leased by a Baptist mission group in preparation for a new missionary, and although it was anticipated that we would be able to use it for only a few weeks before the new missionary family arrived, it gave us at least a temporary place where we could lay our heads. Then, two days before we were to move, our realtor took the listing on a newly constructed house very near our colleagues the Millers, and convinced the owner to lower the price almost $700/month to meet our budget. Finally, the ambassador/landlord asked us to take any of his furniture we could use to the new house, and offered to refund all of the rent which we had pre-paid through September 2011; which he was entitled to keep by the terms of our Rwandan contract.
The ambassador gave us in cash the balance of our prepaid rent on the evening of March 17, and on March 18 we both moved to the new house and signed an 18 month contract with our new landlord, giving him the cash we had received the night before as a deposit. We selected and took with us almost 2/3 of the ambassadors furniture, including some large sofas, a carved wood dining table with matching chairs, 3 poster beds with mosquito netting, and multiple other smaller items. Our new house, pictured below, has 6 available bedrooms, a wonderful flow-through traffic pattern in the living/dining/veranda area, and several levels for multiple activities; in short, the same possibilities for hospitality that we had enjoyed in the vacated house. In addition, it is new; we are the first to live in it, and should have fewer maintenance issues than the older house.
There were some issues to be dealt with – the new house lacked cabinets and closets, which meant that the kitchen was an empty room. However, using our deposit, the new owner was like a kid in a candy shop – asking us to choose the cabinetry and improvements “to make it our home”! This meant 10-14 workmen at the house almost continuously for the past 2 weeks, plastering, painting, installing the kitchen and bedroom closets, and even putting in a rainwater collection system in addition to the city water. We became the construction supervisors, which was hectic and nerve-wracking, but we are very much enjoying the flexibility and enthusiasm of our new landlord. The beautiful thing is that we have been able to continue hosting guests throughout this entire process – a British medical couple who now view our home as their own, a visiting friend from Jordan, a Rwandan pastor who needed a bed for a night, and multiple groups of Rwandan young people and expat families who come for dinner.
Enjoy the pictures below, which will give you an idea of our new dwelling place! I had to smile when a University of Colorado doctor I was talking to in the U.S. asked what kind of house we had in Rwanda, essentially wanting to know if we lived in a hut with a grass roof. As you can see, this is far from a thatched hut, and we thank our God for this!
