What is the world coming to?

The Phillies are in the world series. Nothing more need be said. Except that that is incredibly good!

Dog Walking, Dump Runs and Other Assorted Things

The days have finally cooled off here in South Carolina. Typically we have had sunny days in the 80's or high 70's. I have been enjoying my days by walking around the neighborhood with my new friend Lady Bug (the Reader's dog). Lady Bug and I have enjoyed many days walking and sniffing the scenery.

Paul and I have also taken up the sport tennis. My work in PA had given me a gift card as a good bye gift, so a couple of weeks ago we went and bought some rackets and tennis balls. We are not that good, but we are having a lot of fun learning together. Paul even managed to give himself a black eye. I have to say I had never seen a tennis move quite like it. We have not had any more injuries since then and we are getting so we can hit it over a couple of times back and forth.

Today we made our 5th and 6th dump run. This has been our regular weekend "date" activity for the last month. Although this does not sound very romantic, we believe everything is what you make it, and we have had a lot of fun. Today we invited Paul's sister Camille (who is turning 13 next Friday and is counting down the days until she is an official teenager) to go with us to the dump. She came along reluctantly but by the end she was begging us to let her come with us next time saying she had no idea going to the dump could be so much fun. We had lots of fun throwing things into tractor trailer size dumpsters and yelling out our frustrations we had about life and middle school and acting really tough. It was a successful day and I think we might be done with the dump runs! YEA!

Continue to pray for us about the lawsuit. Paul and I are meeting with our lawyer again this Monday to discuss the case and are planning on going to Arbitration in either November or December. We believe God is good regardless of the outcome but we are praying that there will be justice done. We would appreciate your continued prayers in this matter.

Moving Forward!

Its been quite a while since I have blogged, not because I haven't wanted to, but because life has been busy. In fact, stuff has actually been quite blog-worthy and exciting lately. We've seen God answer some big prayers, bring some big encouragements, and at the same time, teach us that we need to be seeking his kingdom first, as our priority pursuit.  So, here are a couple of the blessings we have seen and experienced. 

About three weeks ago, we began to realize that we were really and truly making progress on the house. Sonja's persistent work on scraping the popcorn ceilings and stripping the 80's wallpaper was finally paying off- the walls and the ceilings were almost completely stripped. It was then that we realized that we had worked so hard on getting that done that we didn't know what we should do next. The next thing that needed to happen was to get our contractor in to take out a few walls (so we could put in floors and begin to make decisions about how the house would look at completion). However, our contractor had told us that he probably wouldn't be free until the end of October. Doh! So, on a Monday night, in the midst of our stressful realization that we were almost out of things we could do, we prayed, asking God to free him up to come and work on our house, so that we

 could move forward with other things. 

Wednesday evening (two days later), after not talking to him for weeks, out of the blue, our contractor called and told us that he had the next two days off to work on our house! Once again, God reminded us that he is our father who answers prayer.  However, lacking faith, we totally weren't at all prepared for the possibility that God would answer our prayers, so we had to quickly decide which walls to knock out. Why is it we are so inclined to ask for big things, and then expect that God won't answer our prayers? It was such a good reminder that he is our Father, not because we deserve it, but because he is merciful. 

So, the next day, (which my bosses at church were gracious in giving me off work), Sonja, me, and the contractor made hasty, but faith-filled decisions about which walls we should take out. We totally destroyed the wall between the small living room/office, & the den, as well as widening the doorway (from 30 inches to 75) between the kitchen and the dining room. It was pretty amazing and quite satisfying to rip and shred drywall with a hammer, as well as to take out the studs with a sledgehammer. We'll post some of those pictures soon.  Our contractor also widened up a nasty closet in our den into a space for some built-in bookshelves, and he installed a new set of french doors between the den and the screened-in porch. Pretty Sweet! The best part was that we discovered that none of the walls we chose to take out were "load-bearing" which meant that they were both easy and cheap to remove. God was so good in providing in that way, as we expected it to cost a lot more and be a lot more difficult to do. 

So, since those two days of hard work, we have made multiple trips to the dump to get rid of destroyed materials, and spent a lot of time looking at hard wood floors. 

A second big way God provided was in leading us to our hardwood providers. One afternoon after work, when Sonja and I were trying to find a local hardwood floor company, my GPS unit took us to the wrong location for the hardwood floor company we were trying to find. Instead, we stumbled upon "Builder's Bargain", a local wholesale builder's store which provides overstocked materials (like windows, sinks, and hard-wood floors) to both private builders and the general public and pretty good prices. So instead of having to pay between 6-7 a square foot to purchase, install, sand, and finish some hardwood floors, we will be paying about $3 a square foot for some beautiful pine floors (actually its "Siberian Larch" which looks like Pine) which will fit perfectly to the look of our house. We love the look it will give our house. 

What's even more amazing is that the location of the store we went to is actually closing down this week, and moving about 45 minutes away, and if we hadn't found it when we did, we never would have gotten the floors we really like at a great deal. Once again, God provided. 

Another amazing thing that God did was to give us good neighbors. Our neighbors are awesome. They have all introduced themselves and befriended us. Though we have owned the house for a month now, we have yet to mow our own lawn. In fact, the same neighbor who has been mowing our lawn recently asked me if he could seed it with some of his spare grass seed, and then he proceeded to cover over the new seed with hay. Unbelievable! 

God also has provided a local guy who is going to go through our whole house, sand all the walls and ceilings, fix all the dry wall problems, and spray everything down with a sealing primer for an incredibly cheap amount of money!

Sonja and I have had constant help from youth groupers, church members, friends, and others in just showing up to help out. Lately, as I have torn out the particle board in the first level of sub-flooring, I've been blessed with an army of help! Nothing beats building friendships with hammers and crowbars in the dust and sweat of working together. It is so encouraging to be served by people who are serving us because they love us. 

There are many more encouraging things I could talk about (we are reaping some of the benefits of other people's work in the church and youth group, we've also been blessed financially) but for now, though things are still hard in some areas (the quarks and frustrations of a new church family, missing old friends, being sued by the jerks at Keystone builders, Sonja's frustrating struggle to find a job), we can both say that despite our struggles, God has been abundantly faithful. 

Please do pray that God would take away this lawsuit. Though we know he's still good and faithful, even if we end up going to court, no matter the outcome, it would be a huge burden off our backs if the whole things supernaturally disappeared. So, please praise God for his provision for us, and continue to ask him to give us hearts to be faith and to trust him in any and all circumstances.  We'll put up some cool pictures of the recent work on the house soon. 

Home Owners, Week One

It has now been a full week of being home owners. I have been working hard to get the house ready to move in and I am enjoying having something to do (nothing new on the job front yet). I have almost finished taking off the popcorn ceiling on the first floor and have taken off the ugly wallpaper in the dinning room and most of the kitchen. Paul's sister Lauren and cousin TJ came over Saturday and ripped up all the carpet in the house (the lady smoked and had let her dogs and cats do their business in the house, so it all smelled and had to go). The house is starting to smell better. It's a long process but it is keeping me busy and I know the house will be great once we fix it up. I also applied to HGTV to have them come and give my masterbath a make-over, so I'll let you know if I get on TV. Here are some pictures of last week.

There Is A Reason

There is a reason why we call this blog "The Adventures of Paul & Sonja"... because our life doesn't always go as planned, it is hard at times, there are many challenges and it is never boring. But we believe that if we look at life like it's an adventure, we can laugh along the trials and unusual circumstances and think about all the great stories we can tell people (and they are all true!).

(We won't even tell you about seeing a black bear up close and personal Monday while hiking at Table Rock!)

Today Paul and I planned to buy our first house. It has been a solid two months of living in his parents house and we were looking forward to getting the keys of our fixer-upper so that we could start making it a home of our own. But that would not make a good story, nor would that be the pattern of our lives.

We got to the house at 10:30am to do our final walk-thru to make sure nothing had been damaged during the moving out process, only to find that the lady hadn't moved out of the house. The smell of smoke and urine took your breath away as you walked into the house to find stuff everywhere. Our Realtor was so upset, but at the same time, none of us were surprised.

We drove to the law office to sign papers. When we got there the lawyer asked if he could speak to Paul and I first. Once in a private room he advised us to not settle on the house until the people were completely out of the house. The lady who owned the house has some sort of mental disability, I don't really know what's wrong with her, but she is not all there and didn't understand that she had to be out of the house. Our Realtor found her a nice trailer where she will be living, but she had no help in moving out. So Paul and I offered to help her. Last week on vacation our speaker talked about loving our neighbor and this was a perfect opportunity to serve a person, who we really don't know, but who is in need.

We quickly ran home and changed into grubby clothes. The lady and her son were ecstatic and couldn't believe we would serve them in this way. Soon after, my pastor's wife, Kathy showed up and we worked together packing the kitchen (nothing had been done). Then more people came from our church. Paul, our pastor Bob and a college guy names John helped load things onto pickup trucks (one being Bob's) while Kathy, Pat (our Realtor) and myself worked on putting things in boxes and bringing them to the truck. Then our associate pastor (Chad) showed up with his son Jackson, and two more church guys (Kyle and Jason) came by to help. We eventually had to tell people to quit coming, because we had so many and we were almost done. We opened all the windows and doors to air the place out. Kathy even cleaned the kitchen sink and the stove which grossed me out so I was so thankful. We all wore plastic gloves because it was so gross! The guys then drove to where they were moving and helped them unload and get settled in their new place while we finished up vacuuming the house and throwing out things.

The lady was so appreciative. She asked what church we went to because she had never been served like this before. She said she and her grown son hadn't been to a church in years. They always thought of Christian's as hypocrites and so never had a desire to go to church. But she said that now she wants to go to church and to our church! I think that is so cool. There is a reason for everything. Paul and I believe that. God gave us an opportunity to serve a lady in need today. Please pray for Viki and her son that they will come to church. She is a cashier at the local grocery store so we will be seeing her around and we hope to continue reaching out to her.

Tomorrow we will go back to the law office to close on the house and we will be proud owners of our first house! Let the adventure (and the craziness that is our life) continue.

Vacation with the Family in NY

Last week Paul and I flew to upstate NY to spend a week at Camp of the Woods with my family. It was nice to get a break from the 100 degree weather (it never got over 65 degrees in the Adirondacks!). We enjoyed wearing jeans and sweatshirts and sleeping with cool nights. It rained a lot while we were there and we even liked that because we didn't feel bad just sitting and relaxing. We stayed in a cabin that overlooked the lake which made it so nice when it rained. We enjoyed sitting on our porch and watching the rain come over the lake and here the loud thunder bounce between the mountains.

We were assigned seats at the dinning hall and were paired up with two older ladies, a mother and daughter. The mom was 86 and the daughter had turned 60 while we were there. At first they were really negative and Paul and I were nervous about how the rest of the week was going to pan out, but we loved these ladies! Both of them were new believers and had a really rough past. Paul and I enjoyed the fellowship we had with these new believers. We talked to them about church, prayer and even how to read and study the Bible. Even while on vacation there are ministry opportunities! Paul and I truly enjoyed getting to know these women.

The speaker for the week spoke on loving our neighbor. It was good to be reminded that we don't have to go far to find 'our neighbor'. We need to love those in our church, in our families, in our work etc. who might be right in front of our faces even if it is hard. Jesus isn't asking us to do anything he wasn't willing to do himself. Being a people of love means you are a people of action because love is something you do.

Grace Baptist Church

Some of you have asked to see pictures of the church down here.
Enjoy!