It's closing day

Closing day has arrived. We meet at the title agency this afternoon at 1pm. I am excited that we will have a home, but there is so much else going on right now it is hard to be excited. I am glad we will have a month to move out of the apartment and into the condo. We want to paint the condo and also need to paint back the apartment before we move. These things will take some serious time. Our lease is up on 31 May so we will probably be completely moved in the condo by then.

Please keep praying for us and thank you for all your encouragement.

Change: It is good

Have you ever noticed how Satan can take a good thing and twist it for bad? I'm sure everyone can give examples of this. I'm also sure this is not a new concept to most of you. In life right now there is much change on the horizon. The changes are good and they will help those effected by them, however change at the same time is difficult. An example of a change is my friend candidating at a local church to be their senior pastor. He and his family presently attend the church where Becca and I attend. If my friend is accepted at this church (which is quite likely) they will be changing churches. Though we will still see them, things will be different.

A prayer I am praying for myself is that I would not allow these changes to make me discouraged. I need to trust that God is in control and that He does all things well.

Good condo news

The report for the condo appraisal and inspection was received today. The report calls for no repairs to the condo. The inspector did request a copy of an inspection that had already been done. He should receive that report tomorrow. Our mortage broker is moving "full tilt" on our condo right now and is hoping to close by next Thursday, 28 April.

Thanks for all your encouragement. Please keep praying as we look forward to next Thursday.

Condo update

I am sorry for the delay in updating everyone on the condo. We found out the final inspection & appraisal was not done until yesterday. We are hoping to receive the report on Monday. We still hope to close before the end of the month but this will be determined by how much we have to do from the inspection report.

Thanks for all your prayers and support in this. We really appreciate it.

Another wrinkle

After the inspection we found that we need to apply to the condo association before we close on the condo. I sent the application to the condo association this morning. Please pray that we are accepted so we can continue with the process of purchasing the condo without delay.

Thank you for all your support during this process. Have a great weekend!

Inspections went well...

Thanks to all of you who have asked about how the inspections went yesterday. The inspections went well. Some very minor things were found however we went ahead and requested the final inspection & appraisal of the condo. If the final inspector does find anything, we will have opportunity to fix those things and the inspector who did the preliminary inspection will sign off that those things are cared for. The final inspection & appraisal was ordered today and should happen over the next few days.

Thank you for praying and remembering us in this process. I will let you know more when we here.

Photos

One of my co-workers in Singapore just returned from photo shoots in India and Sri Lanka. He has posted many pictures from his trips on his website and I wanted to share them with you.

For some reason I cannot program HTML today, there is something wrong with Blogger's interface so I will paste the links below. (You'll need to copy and paste them into your browser.) Please check out the pictures and let Alex know if you like them. I think they are great.

http://pachome2.pacific.net.sg/~mouseartist/india%20/india.html
http://pachome2.pacific.net.sg/~mouseartist/srilanka/srilanka.html

Condo Inspection

The first inspection on the condo will be tomorrow afternoon. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. Please be praying tomorrow that the inspection would go well so we can proceed with purchasing the condo.

Progress on getting a home...

Becca and I looked at a condo on Friday afternoon. The condo is a 2 story, 2 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom with finished basement. The more I think about condos, the more I think it is a good option for us. Purchasing a condo is a good next step after rental living. You still have some of the responsibilities of owning a home, however you do not have all of them at once. The association still cares for the lawn, snow removal and the exterior of the home. We are responsible for the interior. This is a good balance and next step for us.

We made an offer on this condo on Friday and our offer was ACCEPTED!! We are excited. The next step is the pre-inspection. Due to the type of mortgage we will be receiving, there are higher standards on the inspection. Therefore, our realtor will have his inspector go through the condo and make sure everything is okay. The inspector is very thorough. (When he inspected the other home we were interested in, we received a report that was about 2 inches thick.) If our realtor's inspector does not find any problems then we will schedule the final inspection. I would think appraisals and other closing activities would proceed after the final inspection is complete.

So this is where we are right now. Thank you for asking us how things are going and for praying for us. Please keep praying.

Home saga update

Yesterday Becca did some more searching and found 6 more homes. We went through one of the six today. This home is a condo. We found from the seller's realtor that an offer on this home was imminent so we put in an offer of our own. We will find out by tomorrow night at 5pm if our offer was accepted. We both really like this home and hope our offer is accepted. Please pray about this. We'll let you know tomorrow night what happens.