How Much Did you Say?!?

Studying: Revelation 18-20
Memorizing: Romans 1:1-28
Thoughts: Good, but need prayer. Tiredness, I found often leads to temptation, and I've been very tired lately.

So tonight I made a phone call to Germany. Why? Well, the story goes back to Saturday, perhaps even before that. It's no secret that for some time we've been looking to find a different apartment. We are not discontented with where we are right now, but we'd like to be somewhere a wee bit quieter, a little closer to some better stores, and a little bigger. An American couple we know has been planning to go back to the U.S. for a year or two and wanted to know if we were interested in subletting their apartment. It's a nice four-room apartment located close to the Gulf of Finland, and that means fresh air. So we went to look at the place Saturday. It was very nice, I must admit, and the current rent price was well within our range. But our friend warned us that the landlady had requested an appraiser to come by and look at the place because it was time to raise the rent. Our friend gave me the landlady's number who lives in Germany.

Tonight, I finally got around to calling. She was very pleasant on the phone, and very kind to speak slowly for my foreigner Russian. I told her we were very interested in renting her lovely apartment, and she, in kind, replied with her desire of how much she wanted us to be able to have it. Ah, if only we could rent the place on charm alone, then we'd be set. So after all of that stuff I got down to business. "So what kind of price were you thinking?" Cristy and I were hoping for under $1000 a month. I know that sounds ridiculously high, but believe me it's very very low for a four-room in Saint Petersburg. Well, I knew I was in for it when she began the sentence with "You see..." In our short time here I've discovered that when a Russian begins a sentence with "You see..." that they're often about to drop a major disappointment upon you.

So I braced myself. "It's going to be high." I thought. "Perhaps $1100, $1200 or even higher." After several seconds of explanation she finally got around to it. The price: 1400. "Well" I said, "that is a bit high," all the time thinking that perhaps we could talk her down a bit. Fourteen hundred was, of course, the book value of the place. Then she clarified even further. She wasn't talking about Dollars, she was talking about Euros! All of you financial upity-ups out there do the math. The current exchange rate of Euros to Dollars is about 1 to $1.51 right now, meaning she was starting the negotiations at over $2100. Needless to say that ended negotiations quite quickly.

So for right now we are learning to be content. Did we want a bigger place? Of course, but do we need a bigger place? For the moment, no. We're doing just fine. Yes, we will continue to look, but we know the Lord has what we need in store for us.