In 2000-2001 Merle and I served an office mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In September we moved into an apartment that the previous missionaries had occupied on the 8th floor of a 16-story apartment building. There were some features that we liked but several we definitely didn't like.
First, was the construction on the street below our balcony for a new subway station. The incessant pounding would start each morning around 6:00 a.m. and go all day until 10 or 11 p.m. Then there was the difficulty in getting our groceries from the underground parking garage and up to the 8th floor, and down the hall to our apartment. It took both of us, and we could only buy as much as we both could carry. One time Merle dropped me off at the front door of the apartment building while he drove around to park the car. I found myself pushing grocery sacks across the lobby floor to the elevator, then trying to keep the elevator door from closing while I pulled in more sacks. When I got to the 8th floor I had to reverse the procedure then push the sacks to our apartment door. We could live with that after changing our method, but we also disliked the fleas that jumped off other tenants' dogs on to the floor of the carpeted elevator, and onto my legs, since I almost always wore skirts while serving as a missionary.
I have "bad knees" and worried about having to climb up or down eight flights of stairs if the power went off. (It did once). The final straw, however, was the cigarette smoke that came up through the bathroom vent into our bathroom. We had to keep the door closed so it didn't permeate the whole apartment.
By November we decided that we needed to move out of that apartment. Since we were serving a mission we needed to spend most of our time during business hours at the mission office. Landlords in Toronto only show apartments from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays. They will not even pick up their phones on evenings or weekends. We had very limited time for looking at apartments. Landlords also want to see you in person before they will even do a credit check., and almost all apartments are rented on a year's lease. Merle, being incharge of the missionaries' apartments, knew the problems. We started praying about this and asked for the Lord's help.
First we learned about another apartment that met our price range, and we weren't required to sign a year's lease (since we wouldn't be there that long.) It was located on a corner of the second floor (fewer neighbors making noise, foreign cooking smells or smoking next door). No pets were allowed in the building (no fleas in the elevator). Although there was traffic noise, it was not close to the subway line so no pounding. We got underground parking again--a must during winter. That was our needs, but the Lord also provided tender mercies for some of our wants that we didn't have to have, in the form of a pine tree outside our balcony, which reminded us of the fir trees at home, and carpeting throughput the whole apartment. Almost every apartment I had visited in Toronto had wood parquet flooring--but I loved carpeting and that was in this apartment. And, there was a cute little black squirrel in the yard we could watch from our balcony. It almost made up for the homesickness I experienced!
We had a few kinds of tests in the form of harassment from a new landlord, for the last two or three months of our mission, but it was worth it!
NOW we come to January 2010. We had visited Mesa, Arizona and St. George, Utah in the previous two years. We wanted to move to a warmer climate during the winters so we were evaluating those places. When one of my sons moved his family west of Phoenix we went down for a visit in March 2009. In January 2010 we went back again. This time we came during what must have been the biggest monsoon of the century. There was flooding everywhere. Our purpose was to buy a home. We had a real estate salesman show us several possibilities, but it just didn't feel right. One problem was paying for expenses to keep up two properties. It turned out to be a fact-finding mission. We decided that Merle should go back about the end of March, when the part timers would be leaving. By then we had decided that we needed a double-wide manufactured home in a gated community for security purposes. We had also learned what kind of areas would flood and to avoid them.
Before our January trip we had applied for a home equity line of credit at a big bank we did business with, for $100,000. For various reasons such as a salesman who was home sick for a week, and red tape at the office doing the approvals, plus the terrible times the banks were having getting loans approved because of the economy, our paperwork got delayed and it was almost time for Merle to fly back to Arizona. So, we went to our credit union, applied for an home equity line of credit for $50,000 and were approved in two days.
When Merle got to Arizona he looked on Craigslist and found one that met most of our wants and needs including our price. He found a great place in the second one he looked at. It had 1900 square feet, including four bedrooms and two bathrooms, family room, kitchen, dining room and laundry. It had only two steps for me to climb up.
Here come the tender mercies: It had rock landscaping--Merle hates yard work. It had two sheds so he can do his furniture refinishing, and both a shade tree and an orange tree! It was in his price range and he bought it for $50,000. Even the park rental fee was affordable. When he came back home we started pulling in our assets and got them up to $45,000 without depleting everything. We only needed to put $5,000 on the loan, which kept our monthly payments affordable. We sold a stock and a mutual fund and it was the best time during the spring that we could have picked. Our goal is to have the $5,000 paid off in a year and be debt free. Then, Merle found a friend from up here who offered to drive his truck and enclosed trailer down to Arizona with a load of our things, and come back with a load of things for his son who was moving to Washington. Merle bought the gas, helped drive, and saved a lot on moving expenses.
I see this move as something positive. Although my son may only live there for another year or two, we will enjoy them while they are still there, but won't be so close that we won't spend time developing other friends. Besides, with four bedrooms we expect we'll have other family and friends come for visits. Our health will improve in a warmer climate too. I like to think of it as going on a mini-mission each winter. We may do work for humanitarian needs, or family history, or something else, but I do not expect to feel as homesick this time. It will be a new adventure for us. And, as long as Merle can go white-water rafting in the summers, we will have a home in the Northwest too, but we plan to sell the one we presently have because it is too big and we need to downsize. By the way, we are looking for a reliable, dependable, neat, house-sitter such as a student, for the winter months.
Some of our happiest memories are in Toronto, and we will now add Arizona.
