A marathon 5 days not to be soon forgotten

Many people were praying for us as we made the 8-hour trip to south Long Beach to look for houses for us and 2 other families. Since so many have been following this journey, I think I'll just write a detailed account of our time for you. We left on Tuesday morning at 6:00 to start our journey. When we left, we had zero leads and could not get anyone to answer our phone calls when we tried to line up real estate agents. We made the trip with no problems, arriving in the south where the temps were over 100 degrees. We continued to try and make phone calls to line things up for Wednesday so we could start seeing houses but no one would answer their phones. We finally decided that we should go to our friend Aziz's restaurant for dinner and let him make some calls for us. He seems to know everyone in town! Sure enough, Aziz saw us coming and warmly welcomed us with kisses and loud hellos. When we told him we were in town for 5 days to look for houses, he said "no problem. my niece just married the guy who's in charge of such & such real estate agency" and he immediately began making phone calls. Within minutes we had an appointment to call a man at 10AM Wednesday and he would show us some houses. Funny little thing happened while we were eating dinner under a beautiful moon that glistened on the sea in front of us. We were enjoying our food when Aziz came yelling for us to grab our plates and run inside. Before we could get going, a huge storm descended on us and a ferocious wind that filled our eyes and mouths with sand from the beach. Aziz could smell it coming and knew to warn us, though a bit too late. He says they get a lot of these in the month of May. After breakfast the next day, we prayed together for God's blessing and clear leading as we proceeded out to hunt for houses. We were to meet our man at the big mosque downtown. We waited for quite awhile in the car and then Darrell decided to get out and wait outside. He was looking at his phone when this crippled beggar came up to him carrying a bag of medicine. He ignored him, hoping he'd go away but the guy kept trying to talk to him in several languages. Thankfully Darrell didn't reach in his pocket and give him a coin or "shew" him away for being a bug. It turned out he was our real estate agent, ready to show us houses. He became a great friend as he dragged his half-shriveled body around all day with us for 3 days! After seeing the first several houses, we all felt discouraged and depressed. Nothing was to our liking and it seemed hopeless. We looked for 6 hours straight with 3 young children tagging along, no lunch or anything until 4PM. They were absolute angels, much better than the adults! Uncle Darrell rewarded then with ice cream:) The first day did not turn up anything solid, although we saw a few we thought we could make work. But we were a little downhearted that night. We started out again the next morning, now working with 2 real estate agents simultaneously (that was a bit tricky!). The second day we landed one house for one of our families and that felt like a huge victory but we only had one more day to secure 2 more houses because Friday at 5PM the municipality closes for the weekend. That's where you have to go to get a contract signed and legalized. Well, Friday morning came and we had decided on a house for us finally. It was not going to be available until mid-August but we had decided to live in a furnished apartment and store our things until it was ready. It was the perfect house with a swimming pool! We picked up our real estate agent and before we could tell him of our decision, he informed us that the house we wanted was not available anymore. So, back to the drawing board we went. At this point I was ready to take anything and didn't really care where I lived! We looked for hours at many more houses, 30 in all. We were weary yet needing to push on because the hours were ticking away. Along the way I have mentioned that we would love to find a building for our new project that would have guest quarters above it. We had seen one such building the day before but I didn't even bother to get out of the car to see it because I thought we should find our own houses before looking for buildings for our center. We decided to go back and look at that building and on the way, we stopped at another house that the agent thought of on the spur of the moment. It was 10AM on Friday. We liked the house and decided to sign a contract with the owner. We can see the Mediterranean Sea in the distance and beautiful olive groves all around us. Before we signed on our house, we stopped by to see the big building that might work for our project. It could not have been more perfect and above it were 3 guest apartments that were simply amazing. The price is what made us simply not be able to walk away from the deal. We cannot believe what God did in allowing us to procure this building! It is more than we ever dreamed of and will provide lots of work for all the short-term teams that are coming our way in the fall:) So by 11:00, the guys were flying off to the municipality to sign papers before it closed at noon for lunch and Friday prayers. They finished in the nick of time. We still had one more house to find and it just wasn't happening. There was very little time left and the stress level was rising in some of our members who were weary of house-hunting. We finally told the agent that we would see just one more house and then make a decision because we were simply out of time. Wouldn't you know that the 30th house was the one! The owner came straight from Friday prayers at the mosque and one hour before everyone closed for the weekend, the last contract was signed. 3 houses and a building for our center!! WOW, we could not stop thanking the Lord for what he did for us in those few days. On Saturday, the guys drove down to the Lib border and prayed there for that enormous country that is so very lost. When they returned we took off for a nearby island to visit a worker family who has 3 young children. The visit was a great encouragement to them and to our families with young children. They hit it off and had a wonderful time together. God just kept answering prayer after prayer. Sunday we returned back to the capital for another month. We are overwhelmed at his goodness and YOU all certainly had a great part in it all.Thank you!