Settling In

We’ve officially settled in now! We were able to buy our car on Wednesday, July 8th. We got a 1996 Nissan Maxima. Stephen did a thorough search on the internet and he went car shopping that entire week to almost every car dealership in George. Since Megan has not partaken in the joy of a manual transmission, we had to look for automatic vehicles. The problem with this, though, is that there are very few automatic vehicles available. Stephen noticed that the ratio was about 1 to 7, very much favoring manual transmissions. Our decision basically boiled down to 2 cars and one of the vehicles had a transmission problem, so it seemed that Providence was very much involved in our decision making. Out of all the cars available, it came down to only one vehicle that we could choose from! Due to this, we know that this was the car the Lord had set aside for us to use. Not only did the Lord provide a car, but He did so at an exceptional price. We were able to purchase the car for about R25,000 less than what it was valued at! For those of you a little rusty on the Dollar-Rand exchange rate , that is close to $3,500! Once we bought the car we were able to move into our new place on Friday, July 10th. Since then we’ve been running around frantically trying to find the necessities to make it a functioning and welcoming home before school began. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of our little bungalow.


Our car


Our home


The view of the mountians from our front porch




The inside of our home

In the process of trying to buy furniture the Lord has provided in such amazing ways. Our landlord knew of our dilemma and offered his son’s six-seater dining room table and chairs. His son is off studying in London and it was just sitting in his garage, so he offered it to us. Not only are we getting it free but it’s a very, very nice table and chairs. His mother saved up two years to be able to buy it when they were a young couple. To say the least, we are taking very good care of it. And that’s not all! Our neighbors Roxanne and Sean have offered to loan us their antique heirloom desk to use! Another piece we’ll be mindful of. AND our insurance agent gave us patio chairs to use on our porch. I’m telling you the Lord is gracious and abounding in his gifts.
Also in this two week period we signed up for life insurance, renters insurance, car insurance, a cell phone and a land line...that we have to have in order to get internet access. Guess how long it will take them to come out and hook up our land line....21 days! Is that not the craziest concept to our American way of doing things! One bonus to all this is that with the life insurance plan through the company Discovery, we were able to take advantage of a program they offer called Vitality. This is basically a reward points system. The more points you earn the more discounts you receive. You can gain points through various avenues such as doing an HIV test, going to the gym and exercising on a regular basis, having a yearly physical, having a health assessment done at the gym, etc. Through this system we'll gain a free gym membership, we’ll get a huge reduction to our grocery bill by buying healthy foods and will even get things such as discounts to the movie theatres. We have found it to be a very beneficial system and I can see how it entices people to stay healthy and eat right. The company actually exists in the States, too, for those of you who would like take advantage of it.