Welcome to our series You're Not Alone, in which Allen Sonter, for many years a missionary educator in the islands of the South Pacific, tell stories that help us to know that God is always watching over us wherever we are.
This episode is entitled you need a Home. This story is a little different from the previous ones in this series.
Here, the God who is always with us took a hand in my life without being asked. He knew what I needed to do, even though I had no sense of need. Not only does this God who loves us answer when we call to Him, but because he loves us when we commit our lives to Him, he will take over and guide us in the direction he knows is best.
He can do this, you see, because he knows the future as well as the past and the present. David, a friend of mine who was a financial consultant, made the comment that everyone should own their own home. He argued that a person who does not own a home will most likely become a burden on someone else when they become old.
I had never given the idea of owning a home much thought as in the nearly 26 years of married life my wife and I had moved from place to place and had lived in eleven different houses. In some of the Pacific Island countries where we had lived, it had been practically impossible for us as foreigners to own houses, even if we had wanted to. A few days after David's comment, I was on a plane between Auckland and Tonga with a colleague, Bill Irvine, who was a few years older than I.
As we chatted about one thing and another, he looked at me and said, alan, you should seriously consider buying your own home. If you don't act now, you'll be too old to get a loan from a bank. Even if you have to borrow most of the finance, at least you will have started to build up equity in an appreciating asset.
If you come up to retirement without owning a home, you'll be an embarrassment to the organisation and to your family. For some reason, Bill's advice brought back to my mind the earlier comment made by my financial consultant friend David, and it made a strong impression on my mind. When I returned home, I told my wife Margaret about the advice and added maybe the Lord is trying to tell us something.
Perhaps he wants us to buy a house. We prayed about the idea and decided to look around to see what was available and to assess our finances. You might remember that I told you in a previous story that we had a near new car that we could change for an older model, making available about $4,000.
We had some savings in the bank and we had an organ worth around $3,600, which we reluctantly decided we would have to sacrifice margaret is a music teacher and it would have been nice to keep the organ for teaching purposes, but we still had two pianos so she could continue teaching piano. We thought that altogether we could raise enough for a deposit on a small house. Next we got a map of the south Auckland area and marked the position of my office at Papatoitoi and the position of the high school at Mangare which our two children attended.
We decided that we wanted to live within walking and cycling distance of these two places. When I drew a circle around each point, the two circles intersected down one street only portage Road Papatoitoi. We drove down Portage Road to see whether there were any for sale signs in front of any houses, but there were none.
We advertised the car and only one person replied, but he bought, so we didn't need any more replies. We advertised the organ and a couple came to see it on the weekend. They said they liked the organ and expected to come back the following weekend to pick it up.
On the Tuesday, we received a letter from Margaret's mother. The letter contained a check for several thousand dollars with a note to the effect that Mother had just sold some shares and thought we could use the money to put toward a house. This changed the picture considerably, as we could now look at a reasonably sized house which we really needed for our family.
We visited a real estate agent on the Wednesday and made arrangements for him to show us several houses on Friday. On that Friday morning, we asked God to show us what we should do and soon found ourselves looking over houses with the agent. The first couple of houses didn't impress us at all, and they were not where we wanted to live.
Almost without us being aware of it, the agent drove us a few blocks across Papatoitui until we pulled up outside a substantial high set brick house. It was built on a good sized block next to a tree covered part of a school ground. The house looked very plain, as the galvanized double garage doors and handrails up the front steps had never been painted and the yard had not been developed.
As we got out of the car, we realized that we were in Portage Road. Papatoy toy the house had no for sale sign, and the agent explained that it had only just come on the market. Inside the house we noticed the loud wallpaper designs and colors, but the layout of the rooms was just what we were looking for.
Downstairs there was a double garage with room for a workshop and a large undeveloped area that could be made into a flat. Something about an overhead cupboard in the kitchen looked OD as it appeared to be twisted, but I didn't think much about it at the time. The agent said the owners were asking $49,000 for the house and we were surprised at how low the figure was compared with the size of the house and the other houses we had looked at that morning.
Isn't it amazing how house prices have risen since then? On the kitchen sink was a card indicating that another agent had already shown a prospective buyer through earlier that day. After looking through that house, the agent took us to a couple more houses, but we kept thinking of the one in Portage Road, so soon went back to the agent's office. As we sat down in front of the desk, the agent asked, what do you want to do? Do you want to sign up for the house in Portage Road? I looked at Margaret questioningly.
She usually takes a long time to make up her mind. She can spend half an hour or so, it seems to me, just deciding on a piece of dress material that costs a few dollars. But without hesitation, she now volunteered.
Let's sign for this one. We offered $48,000 on condition that the bank would grant a loan within a few hours. The loan was granted and the owners had accepted our offer.
So everything seemed to be going fine with final settlement in three or four weeks. Incidentally, the agent told us a few days later that the person who had looked through the house earlier on that Friday morning had come back to the office later in the day wanting to sign up for the house, but had been too late. There had been a reason why God had impressed Margaret to sign without delay.
I hoped the other would be purchaser found another house to his liking. About this time, God showed us that he could plan better than we could. On the weekend, the couple who were going to buy the organ rang to say they couldn't take it because it wouldn't fit in their lounge room, so we were $3,600 short.
A few days later, we learned that a friend who was to spend a year on Norfolk Island was looking for somewhere to store his car. We told him he was welcome to leave it in one of our garages in our new house. He had seen our advertisement for our organ and asked, by the way, have you sold your organ yet? We told him how the expected sale had fallen through and he asked how much money we needed to make up the shortfall.
We told him we were short by $3,600, and he immediately responded I've just sold a house down the country and don't plan to do anything about buying a new one till I get back from Norfolk. The money is only sitting in the bank and tax will take a fair percentage of the interest. In any case, you can have the $3,600 interest free for as long as you need it.
And he wrote out a check for the needed amount just like that. So we didn't need to sell the organ, and it proved to be a blessing many times after that. And that was not all.
Inflation was running at almost 18% at the time and the bank interest rate was 12%. Then the government decided to assist First Homebuyers by allowing half of the interest paid as a direct tax rebate for the first five years of the loan. So we effectively paid only 6% interest on our loan for five years.
Over the next three years, we changed the wallpaper and made various other improvements to the house, including the development of a flat downstairs. In the process, we realized that the twisted cupboard in the kitchen was caused by the floor sagging under the weight of the pantry and the hot water cylinder. This problem was easily solved by jacking up the floor and supporting it by a wall in the downstairs flat.
It did occur to me when I was making the repairs that the low price of the house was probably due to the previous owner thinking that there were major structural problems. So he just wanted out at any price. Then we were asked to go to PNG, so we rented out the house.
The income from rent, together with some kind help from my father and what we were able to save in PNG made it possible to pay the house off completely within about five years. Because of the currency exchange rate, every PNG keener or dollar we were able to save and send to New Zealand became NZD2. So that helped a lot in paying off the loan.
I'm convinced that the God who is always with us knows us so well that he works things out to suit our individual personalities. He knew that I would be quite happy to do some work on the house, so he directed us to a house that, while cheap to buy, needed work done on it. He knows you too, and when you know Him, you will appreciate his loving and caring interest in you.
You've been listening to our series You're Not Alone stories told by Allen Sonter that help us to know that God is always watching over us, wherever we are. If you have any comments or questions, send an email to
[email protected] or give us a call within Australia on zero two four nine seven, three three four five.
Six. May God bless you and remember you are not alone. You have been listening to a production of Three ABN Australia australia Radio.
