Ever hesitate to follow God because you worry about the future?
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” (Matt. 6:25 NIV)
February, 2015.
Now that Soo and I were convinced that God was calling us to Santa Ana, California, we had to figure out where we were going to live.
We sold our condo in Anaheim Hills right before leaving for Japan, so we had no home to return to. We’d have to find a rental. Soo began to search online and see what rentals were going for, primarily in the city of Tustin, just east of Santa Ana.
Sticker shock– the rental rates she found were much higher than what we had been paying monthly on our condo. We didn’t know if we could afford to live in Tustin, much less in Irvine, the “safest city in America” where housing was at a premium due to its competitive school district.
“What about Santa Ana?” Soo asked me. “Since that’s where God called us.”
Uh…
For anyone unfamiliar with Orange County, California, let me just say that Santa Ana (undeservedly) has a less-than-favorable reputation in the area, one of crime and grime. To some, it’s the black sheep of Orange County: the urban among the suburban, a brick-and-concrete scar on a stucco-and-travertine facelift.
There’s a rumor that homeless people in neighboring cities like Irvine are picked up by their local police and dropped off in Santa Ana. I have no idea if this is true or not, but 1) yes, there is a sizeable homeless population in the city, and 2) whether it’s true or not, the rumor fueled the negative stereotypes that many locals, including myself, had about Santa Ana. In my mind, Santa Ana was the furthest thing from idyllic Ofunato, and I worried that our family would not adjust well to such a drastic change in environment.
Our home church had been talking about moving to Santa Ana for years, and about four years prior to this episode, one of the church leaders bought a house in the city. I was part of a group that was invited to pray and bless the home when this leader’s family, the “O” family, first took possession of the property. I remember being pleasantly surprised at how nice and cozy the neighborhood was.
So when Soo asked if we should consider renting a home in Santa Ana, I stammered, “Yeah, um, I don’t know. Unless we could get a house on the same street where the O family lives, but I don’t think that’s likely.”
Cut to a few weeks later, when the O family emailed us and asked if we could Skype.
Though I had known the O family before going to Japan, we hadn’t spent a great deal of time getting to know one another, and we touched base maybe once or twice while we were overseas. We hadn’t connected in almost a year. I didn’t know what to expect with this call.
The video chat began. We greeted each other and spent a few minutes catching up before they asked us, “What are your plans after Japan?”
Soo and I replied that we were feeling called to Santa Ana but didn’t know why.
They glanced at one other, then proceeded to inform us that they were moving overseas, and when they prayed about what to do with their house, God told them, “Bay family.”
Couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
The O family was offering to rent us part of their home– the same home I had visited and prayed at four years earlier. I told Soo that I might consider moving to Santa Ana if we could get a place in the O family’s neighborhood, and not only did we get one, we were getting the O family’s actual house!
Though we were terribly excited to be offered this house, we did have a question about the school district, since that’s what many of us parents first consider when contemplating a move. They told us that there was a good school about a mile away, but if you didn’t live in that neighborhood, you’d have to win a lottery to enroll. They suggested that we look into the lottery requirements online and submit applications for our two boys.
I took a look at the school website and found that I had no access to some of the documents required to apply; for example, a utility bill in my name, with a Santa Ana address. Since I still had work to do that day in Ofunato, I decided to postpone the application process, figuring I’d get back to it at a later time.
The next day, I was working at the Ofunato volunteer base when my phone rang. The caller ID listed it as a call from Santa Ana.
It was Mr. and Mrs. O, calling to let me know that the deadline for submitting an application for the school enrollment lottery was the very next day. They strongly encouraged us to fill out the application as best as we could from Ofunato, ASAP, and email it to Mrs. O, who would then personally take the printouts to the school. They suggested that I check my email in the middle of the night or early morning, in case I needed to forward any other documents before the end of the day. (The time difference meant that 5pm in Santa Ana was 9am the following day in Ofunato.)
I pulled together whatever supporting documents I could and emailed them in that night, praying for God’s will to be done, surrendering the ultimate outcome to Him.
I woke up at 1am to check my email. Nothing from the O family. I went back to sleep.
I woke up at 2am. Actually, I hadn’t really fallen asleep since 1:00. Checked my email. Still nothing.
Fell asleep and woke up again at 3am.
There was an email from Mrs. O. Did she need more documents from me?
Nope.
She wrote to tell me that God was continuing to give our family favor– when Mrs. O went to the principal’s office with our printed applications, she explained that we couldn’t apply in person because we were missionaries in Japan.
Upon hearing our story, the principal accepted our boys into the school without even looking at our applications.
Just like that. No lottery draw. Simply God’s favor, working through a sympathetic school principal and a helpful family friend.
Being the typical Orange County parents, Soo and I had always worried about our kids’ schooling. Before going to Japan, we worried about sending our oldest son to the local kindergarten because we had heard horror stories from other parents. We decided to trust God with it and enrolled him there anyway. He ended up loving it and was sad to leave it when we moved to Japan.
Then, when we went to Ofunato, we worried about both of our boys’ education as there was no international school in the area, and neither Soo nor I had the bandwidth to home-school them. We enrolled them in local schools, including a Japanese public elementary school, and they not only endured it, they thrived.
Now, as God was calling us to Santa Ana, He reminded us that our children are first and foremost His children, and He will provide for them in ways beyond our human capabilities.
Calling to Santa Ana? Check.
Place to live? Check.
Good school for the kids to attend? Check.
But one question remained.
How would we pay the bills?
