![]() We live in an old relocated villa on
an acre property in Palmerston North. We spent ten years renovating
our house and added an extension using old recycled doors, windows and
accessories collected from demolition yards. It has been a labour of
love, especially putting on the finishing touches such as coloured glass
in old colonial doors, using old Victorian door locks and getting
mouldings made up at a local sawmill to save money. Old villas
inevitably have lots of gaps, cracks and holes in the wrong places that
in our case used to let the wind and rain in. At 3am one night we awoke
to rainwater pouring into the bedroom! Thankfully, these are all
‘healed’ now – our neighbour affectionately calls our place ‘Polyfilla
Villa’. I guess it’s the same as God seeing the
potential in us in our broken state and gradually restoring us, eh?
The potter and the clay……..the renovator and the polyfilla….. We
didn't actually need the interest free loan to repay a mortgage but
instead have used part of it to connect the house to city services as we
were on tank water and our septic tank was in desperate need of being
renewed. When the council said they were putting services in our road,
we jumped at the opportunity. It ended up costing tens of thousands –
not a cheap exercise but well worthwhile….it’s not often you can be
pleased burying your money underground with nothing physical to see for
it! We believe God is in favour of living in
beautiful surroundings (well, He does have a good track record of doing
nice surroundings) and lack of money needn’t inhibit that. Floss has
made some lovely flower gardens, mostly from cuttings and Paul has made
various architectural features and pieces of furniture from demolition
timber. We have bought items such as a colonial mantelpiece for $20,
got an ornate old coal range for green dollars, etc. It’s all about
seeing the potential and applying lots of ‘elbow grease’. We now have a
spare room for guests to stay in and this year alone we have had five
lots of overseas visitors. We plan to use more
of our loan to landscape the property as the fences are literally
rotting away and falling down; paths and a wider drive would be an asset
and boxing in veggie garden raised beds, etc would make things take
shape. We plan to keep the rest of our loan
and continue paying into Liberty Trust for our children, Annie and
Johnny, who are 12 and 10 respectively. In ten years this loan could be
invaluable in these times of increasing house prices. We have also set
up an account with the Trust for a family we know who are currently on
overseas mission. The beauty of all this is
that it is God’s way with finance and as long as folk are prepared to go
against the tide of ‘get-now-pay-later’ and ‘pay and wait’, God rewards
us with the savings the rest of the world craves. Ironical, but God’s
way has often been seemingly bizarre such as Noah building his ark and
Moses standing at the shore of the Red Sea. It’s all about faith, eh! So, a huge ‘THANKS’ to everyone involved behind the scenes at Liberty Trust and Ark Resources. God bless you all. Paul & Floss, Annie & Johnny Gummer 28 February 2008 |
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