Home Sweet Home

Finally, I have a picture of our house. This was taken from the outside of our gate (before we could move in) looking towards the front door. It is a very nice looking house and has a nice layout inside. That is actually quite unusual for houses here. Most of the homes that we looked in before deciding on this one, had quite the "odd" set-up inside.

Even though we are very happy with our new house and feel completely blessed by God; there are still a few things that need some "tweeking". As you can see above, this is a very typical Indonesian bathroom. Well, actually, this one has been "westernized" a little bit, thanks to the prior US Aid tenant (tsunami days). Normally, there would be a squat pot where the toilet is sitting. What I wanted you to see here is what we call a "bak" (said like - bawk). This is NOT a tub and you do NOT crawl inside. All you do is fill it up with water and then stand on the outside and use that little scoop bucket to throw water on yourself...freezing cold water on yourself!! You will also notice that there is no sink in the bathroom. This is a very common thing here in Aceh. We never noticed that so much in Kalimantan. So, as you can see, we will be making a dry shower area where the bak is sitting and probably adding a sink somewhere. We have 2 other bathrooms that will need the same treatment if we would like to have a hot shower and not have to brush our teeth over the toilet.

And here is our kitchen area. It is in much better shape than most of the other homes we looked at. All the others would have to be torn out immediately and rebuilt before we could even move in. We wanted to find a house that we could move in and renovate when time allowed. This is a perfect kitchen for us...at this time. You can't really see it in this picture but the wooden doors are rotting out under the sink. And if you were to stand next to the countertops, they would come to just below your hips (if you are my height). So washing dishes and preparing food can really be hard on the back. The lower area in the counter is for a countertop, 2 burner, propane stove. That is what most Indonesians cook with. We will eventually tear all of these out and rebuild them so that they are at a height where I won't break my back and can use my stove/oven and still have counter space.

If anyone is wondering what to do this fall, you would be welcome to come and help us with these minor, little "tweeks" to our house. I do want to say though, that the Lord has truly blessed us with this house. We could move in immediately and not have to worry about "fixing" things up right away. There are so many other things that have a much higher priority right now and God knew that we needed this house. We are very grateful to Him and very grateful to all of you who have prayed for us these past few months as we have had to make several transitions.