here we go again

This is Grant writing this time... on the brink of tearing into another house project. You would think we would have learned our lesson when we bought the house in Speer, but I guess we just have too much fun dreaming, designing, building, and wearing ourselves out.

So, a few months ago, Hannah and I realized that the guest house really isn't going to work very well for us with a family. Also, we are looking for an English teacher to take Hannah's place, and that person will need a place to live, so we decided to start looking for another house for us. Our initial thought was to rent, and we started keeping our eyes out for rental houses, but then another opportunity came up. Neighboring Marshall and Jan's house is a lot where a man started building a house about 7 years ago and then stopped and let it set. (That's actually very common down here. Because the building material is brick and concrete, and can be left exposed to the elements, people build when they have money. When they run out of money, they stop building until they earn enough money to start again.) This particular house has almost all the first floor walls built.

After discussing it with the other missionaries and a few other people, we decided that the property would make a good asset for the church. The church association will own the lot and the house. We plan to start with a small, two-bedroom, 1-1/2 bathroom house, with the ability to build a second story in the future if more space is ever needed.

I've already started cleaning up the lot, which has made everybody on the street curious about what is going on, but it's a great way to meet the neighbors. I also learned the hard way this morning that I'll have to be a little more careful watching for scorpions crawling around the rocks that I'm trying to get out of the way.

One of the more challenging aspects of the project will be with hiring people to help. We will welcome the help of those who visit us in the next few months, but prefer to hire Mexican construction workers as much as possible rather than using work teams. The challenge comes in who to hire. Unemployment is high in Ixtlan, especially in the construction industry, and there are already people asking for work.

So, we are praying for wisdom in who to employ and in making sure the proper things in our lives are prioritized. We realized that unless God builds the house, we are laboring in vain, so we are trying to commit all things to Him. We also very frequently stand in awe of how God used our year we lived in Princeville to teach us so many life lessons that we had no idea we would need so soon down here. I had another one of those moments as I tried to work through a purchase agreement and real estate closing in Spanish. If I had not had the experience of buying and selling a house in Speer (and the advice and help I'm getting from Marshall), I would have been completely and totally lost.

So, here's some pictures of the lot:

 View of the lot from the street

 Front of house

 Future Bathroom

 If we don't trim some of trees, we'll be able to sit at our desk and pick fresh guayabas

 Our master bedroom, don't you love the natural decor?

 Looking at the street from the house

 Picture taken from the master bedroom window. The church is on the left and you can kind of see Marshall and Jan's house in the back of the picture.

View of house taken from the church. The yard to the left is Marshall & Jan's. 

So as you can see, we're pretty close in location to everything going on here, and there's definitely no lack of work to be done. We are excited about the project though, and will really enjoy having a place of our own hopefully by the end of the summer. That's the goal anyway :) You know how that goes...