We soon realised that the price we had to pay to travel to church meetings during the week, was costing us a lot, but we knew that we could not afford to pay the high rent in the Greater London area. We also noted a clause in the general rental agreement that we signed, stating that we are not allowed to run religious meetings in the house. We concluded that the best thing we could do to help ourselves now and for our future in Yeovil was to buy our property. But for me, it has to be a house that needs renovation so that we can make money when we sell it.

 

I loved watching all the house improvement documentaries on television. This creative streak in me that started way back in Newlands, South Africa with my kitchen, was trying to get out and get working. The problem was that the more we saved for a deposit, the faster the house prices were rising. Buying a house was getting more and more out of our reach. Since we were not British citizens at that time, they required us to pay a significantly higher deposit for the mortgage.

We soon realised that if this is something that is in God’s will for us, we need Him to help us.

 

God was about to move in a way that we never expected. I remember the time back in South Africa when David and Sylvia Owen were to move to America to plant a church in Malibu. They explored every option to make it financially feasible, but they couldn’t succeed until God used someone to provide them with a gift of over 200,000 Rand. It was a lot of money back in the early nineties. I remember wondering what that must feel like. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought of or known of anyone who would give another person that much money.

 

That was until we received a generous gift of £25,000 to put down a deposit on a house. That was 300,000 Rand with the exchange rate in 2004, today it will be double that. We found ourselves without words! When you live with an open heart and an open hand, there comes a time when you see what it looks like when God opens His heart and His hand and gives back to you.

 

We knew exactly what we wanted:

1. A house in need of renovation. We know they are hard to come by as a lot of people started doing it to make a fast profit.

2. We needed it to be close to our church, my work and close to Hendrik’s work. Hendrik put his finger on the map on a big roundabout on the A316.

3. And a special request from Hendrik, “Lord, if possible, can it be on a river?” The rest of us rolled our eyes.

With the knowledge of the gift we received, we arranged a meeting with a financial advisor who was worshipping at the same church as us. He found us a mortgage lender willing to lend money to foreigners with a work permit.

 

After we completed all the forms and he closed his laptop, he asked us what it was that we were looking for. We told him that we were looking for a renovation project. Something we can make money on. At that moment, his wife walked past, turned to him, and asked, “I wonder if they would be interested in that house?” “What house?” We wanted to know. They then told us that they are trying to help friends of theirs who are living abroad, to sell their house. They had a buyer, and the sale fell through, and they were planning to put it back on the market the very next day. They told us where the house was and gave us the keys to go and have a look, warning us that the house was in desperate need of renovation.

 

Very excited, we drove to the address. It was everything we prayed for. Not only was it exactly what we were after, but we could see the big roundabout from that house, and to top it all off, it was on a river canal. We stepped out into our back garden and watched the swans go by.

 

Over the next four years Hendrik and I spent every penny we had on renovating the house. We bought the house for £170,000 and we spent another £30,000 renovating it. When we moved to Yeovil, we sold it for £253,000, making a whopping £53,000 (one million Rand) to set us up for settling in Yeovil. The work was physically back-breaking, but we found enjoyment in it. I know there were times that Hendrik would rather have been doing something else, but I saw him at times, stopping in his tracks and admiring his hard work and what he achieved. I don’t think he ever thought he had it within him.