It is very clear now that keeping this blog up to date is going to be hard; the work I am about to talk about hapened on the 12th of January and as it is now the 2nd of Fed I am actually getting close to a month behind. Not only have I found that its been hard to find time to blog, I have also been finding it hard to find time to physically do the work on the house. While the house is not ready to live in it is not really possible to do much work during the week, I work till 6 or 7 and then the additional drive out there plus the trip home to sleep would give me very little time to actually work. Most of my Sundays are full so this leaves Saturdays which have had to do, even Saturday are not always available. My comitment to Kids camp meant that I pretty much lost an entire week, although thankfuly due to my Mum graciously giving up more of her time I was able to have a security alarm installed while I was away.
When I was thinking about the works that would need to be done to the house to get it 'back on its feet' so to speak, an alarm system didn't even occur to me. When I spoke to the realestate agent about resale however, the first things he said were a security alarm and an air conditioning unit. It’s fair enough air conditioning is a luxury on everyone’s wish list when their looking for a home these days. On the other hand an alarm is not a luxury, it’s not a convenience in fact if anything it’s an inconvenience. I’ll bet if you asked a bunch of people ‘what’s one thing you would really like if money was no object?’ no one would say a security alarm. A security alarm is only in demand (especially in this particular area) because of Fear. Unfortunately Fear has a huge impact on this type of an area; it's the reason for its bad reputation and also the main contributing factor towards living up to it. It's Fear that keeps a lot of good people out of the area and it's Fear that forces a lot of good people who live there to keep to themselves and ignore what’s going on around them.
I realize that having detailed how my house was trashed, broken into and set on fire in the preceding posts, it might seem strange for me to imply that these Fears are unnecessary. Actually more recently my mother’s handbag was even stolen right out of her car while it was in my backyard just outside my backdoor. But may I make two points:
- Firstly I never said that the Fears were unfounded, just unfortunate.
- And secondly everything I have encountered thus far I am relatively sure is the work of kids, maybe in their early teens, perhaps stuck in a bad cycle, probably under the influence of some questionable friends and various substances (that is if the bottles and bongs that I’ve cleaned up paint an accurate picture).
It’s obvious that these kids need something and I am fairly confident in saying that what they need is not; for us to Fear them. In my first blog I spoke about redeeming a home in the hope that I could also point in the direction of someone who can redeem souls, It would be great if these same kids came back and saw where I was pointing. It would be great if what I offered them was not Fear but a hand in taking the first steps towards life and life in all its fullness.
I now have a house with a new hardwired alarm system which I got for a good price due to a deal that was going at the right time, including 12 months free back to base monitoring! I also have a new prayer; That God will use this house as a sign post to redemption, as a wise woman (you know who you are) once said; a light house in a dark place.
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