We are waiting to hear if we’ve been accepted to rent an apartment we applied for. The housing market in Paris is tough. Owners often require you make 3.3 times the rent and if you know anything about rent in Paris, we don’t fit the criteria. But we’ve applied and we are waiting.

This is the third apartment in France that I’ve had to wait on, so you think I’d have this waiting thing down. Each time though, God demands the glory and praise for how we’ve been chosen. The first time I had to wait was for an apartment in Toulouse. I called an agency and it it just so happened that there was an apartment that was being renovated that we could be the first to visit. The place was amazing and my roommate Carrie and I were in awe that could potentially live in that place. We applied and all looked well until the owners found out we worked for a Christian organisation. The agent convinced the owners to at least meet us before they disregarded our dossier. Our meeting with the owners felt a bit more like an interrogation with questions like, “Are you going to evangelise the neighbors” and “will this apartment turn into a meeting space?” That evening as I prayed and asked God if He’d give us the apartment, I wondered what the name of the street was that the apartment was on. I looked it up: Boulevard Bonrepos. Boulevard of Good Rest. That was all I needed to know the place was ours.

Our current apartment has a similar story of God “guarding” it for us. I called the day they had finished renovations and the agent said we could visit it the next day. We were the second couple to visit it. My eyes brimmed with tears as the owner asked us if we wanted the apartment. I said, “yes.” She called a few days later to say we got the apartment and just the day before we found out we were expecting our first baby. That was five years ago, almost to the date.

So what about the whole “preparing a table bit?” In my last post I mentioned finding a fantastic table on the street. Since then we’ve visited and applied for “the terrace apartment,” as we call it, and decided that table would be great on the terrace. Yesterday I was thinking it would be nice if we had the white Ikea folding chairs that we passed on to some colleagues to go around our someday-terrace-table. Well, guess what I found on the street yesterday? Two black Ikea folding chairs and two lawn chairs. That’s just fun. I have to wonder if the Lord is preparing a table on the terrace  for our family. I’ll keep you posted.