Land

We are finally land-owners! After many weeks of bargaining and working with a lawyer to clear all the paperwork, we own a cute little piece of property about 2 blocks from where we live now...we can even see it out our family room window. One morning, as Scotty was heading to what he thought was going to be the meeting with the lawyer and the owner where we sign the dotted line and the land becomes our property, everything became a bit more complicated. He found out that the owner was expecting us to have the total amount we were to pay, in cash, ready to hand over. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not real comfortable carrying thousands of dollars in my pocket, through downtown, where pocket theft is as common as McDonalds. We brainstormed for a while and immediately began the process of shifting money around from account to account so that we would be able to take out that much at once. Around here, because deception and dishonesty is such a problem on so many levels, you don't get what you're paying for until you produce the money in full. Unfortunately, our land-owning, lawyer friend apparently doesn't have a bank account, so we couldn't just transfer the money there. And, if he did, he doesn't want to have to pay fees on that large sum being transfered, so he'd rather have the cash. We finally agreed that we would sign the papers and then all walk together to the bank where Scotty would withdrawl the money and hand it over. This seemed to be an agreeable deal and according to our many prayers, the transaction went smoothly and safely. Scotty went out this morning to contract 2 neighborhood boys to move a large stack of rocks that sits in front of the garage into our lot so that we can soon have some temporary doors put up to keep out loiterers. The old owner warned us that people liked to use our property "for a bathroom"- as people have a tendency to do whenever and wherever the urge hits them- so we'd like to get some doors up pretty quick. Then we wait. Probably for a couple years. We've spent almost all our money just buying the land, so we've decided to raise some more money and wait until we've returned from our home assignment in 2009 to begin the building process. That gives us lots of time to dream!