Wednesday, February 06, 2008

The continuation of our journey to South Africa and God’s favor since we arrived

The third and final leg of our journey was the longest but we made it. Our arrival was simple we had to go through customs and collect our luggage. As we were looking for our last 2 pieces of luggage, one of the porters walks up to me while Mike was at the carousel and says, “Are you looking for a large black bag that has the name Talley on it, I think it is over on the other side of the carousel I’ll get it for you. I told him yes but had no idea how he knew who I was or how many bags we had. We didn’t ask how he knew we just saw it as God’s hand on us.
Our rental car was a breeze and away we left to come to our resting for place for a few days, Wellwood Lodge. We had a great breakfast and then knew we had to hit the ground running. We had an appointment with a Real Estate agent to show us a couple of different flats (apartments) that we had been looking at on the internet before we left Brentwood, but when we arrived there was only one, so we felt this was where The Lord wanted us to be. We did check a few other agencies but nothing was available. We made an agreement pending a few things that needed work, mainly the carpet. They agreed to clean the carpets and had that done immediately, but by Sunday when it had dried it still didn’t look great. We met a couple a few doors down and they invited us up to see their flat, when he opened the door we were amazed at the hardwood floors he had. We, of course, started asking all kinds of questions and it turned out that we had the same floor under the soiled carpet. We began praying that the Lord would allow us to show the owner the floor and consider allowing us to have it fixed back to its original hardwood. We would even do some of the labor to keep costs down.
Monday morning came and we were supposed to meet the agent and the owner, but the agent was sick. The owner was great and she loved the idea of the floors and agreed to pay for all of it and hire someone else to do the work. Since then, so much more has been done to update the 30 year old flat and we are very excited. The only draw back is that we can’t move in until Friday. After that, we left the flat and we went to see a man recommended by John Thomas, about a car. Richard had a car that was going to be traded in so we had a verbal agreement for this car. It came in later in the day but it didn’t have air conditioning or power steering so we asked him if he had anything else and he did and it was cheaper. So PRAISE GOD! We get the car tomorrow. We also found a used bedroom suite and paid a deposit to have our telephone line (this is a whole other story but I will just give the glory to Him) put in. Lastly, most of the American’s that are here, were telling us how bad the banking system (fees for everything!!!!!!!!!!) is and Avril, John’s wife, recommended Nedbank. We first went to another bank, because of a recommendation, but I was hesitant about saying yes to opening the account because the fees were so bad. We then went to Nedbank and they have a flat monthly fee ( which is ridiculous) but it was the best of what we could have gotten.
Today is a new day and we just praise the Lord for the beauty that is here and all that He has in store for us today. We are having to leave Wellwood Lodge but we have a friend that has been so gracious to let us stay with her until our flat is ready. Check back next week for Days of Our Cape Town Lives.

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