We stood looking at a bright-orange home with a huge flag hanging from a paneless upstairs window. We’d been in our host country just a few months with our three sons and had expected to be deep into language learning by now. But the only way to get a residency permit was to own a home, so we were spending our time searching. It wasn’t going well. We wanted outdoor space for our kids, but everything we saw was too rural, dilapidated, expensive, or illegal.
The orange house in a small village on the edge of the city had just become available when we came asking, but it took three appointments before the real estate agent finally showed up with the right keys. This better be good, I thought, watching him turn the lock in the old metal door. We entered a dingy corridor with uneven, stick-on vinyl flooring. The home was unfinished, with open windows and daylight showing through the tile roof, even though it had been occupied for several years. We had no intention of spending our time on a fixer-upper, so we walked out, hoping never to see it again.
The agent called repeatedly, “I can get a team to refurbish the house in two months! I can get the owner to lower the price!” he promised. Turning up nothing else, we met him again at the orange house.
“Can we get Wi-Fi here?” we asked. “Does it have a legal deed?”
“Of course! No problem!” he assured us.
It had neither. The deed office assured us that after purchasing the house, we could apply for the deed, and it would be “no problem.” It seemed like a risk, but it was our only option if we wanted to try to stay, so after serious prayer we signed the papers.
‘No problem!’ they said. But we had heard that before!
During the next three months we waited for the holidays to pass, then waited for a background check to be completed, then waited some more. As we faced so many apparently impossible obstacles we were at peace knowing that God would open the way if He wanted us to stay. Then one day the house was ours!
Our application for a legal deed was rejected. “The house is too big for the lot, and one wall is over the property line,” they told us. Now what? Jacob visited the immigration office to see if we could still get the homeowner’s residency permit with only the property deed and the deedless house.
“No problem!” they said. But we had heard that before! We decided the best option was to move forward with the remodel, take our chances with immigration, and, if necessary, try to flip the house.
The real estate agent hired relatives for the job. Despite the unseasonably mild winter, progress was slow. One day one main worker shot his father, our other worker, and work halted while the real estate agent worked to bail him out of jail. Both men returned to work, only to walk off the job. Five months later we finally moved in, and a week later we were denied the residency permit. They did give us another five-month tourist visa. As King Hezekiah did with Sennacherib’s letter in 2 Kings 19, my husband, Jacob, spread the paperwork before the Lord on our new terrace and pleaded for guidance.
“No problem,” said God. Two weeks later a law was passed allowing illegal dwellings like ours to qualify for deeds.