One year ago today, God blessed us with our new home.  It was a long journey, but God kept us on track.  It all started when, in the winter of 2017, when Sandi and I joined three other families at our Church, Brentwood Bible Fellowship to work through the David Ramsey Financial Peace Bible Study that was led by our Associate Pastor Corwin Wong. Shortly after completing that study, I was invited to join a small Men’s Bible Study lead by our Pastor Andy Cochran.  Each week when we met for our Men’s Bible Study we completed a ten question survey regarding our previous week.  It was question number six “Have you been a good steward of God’s resources?” and question number ten “Where have you been struggling with God?” that eventually convicted me.  My answer to number six was “Yes” and finally four months into the Bible Study I admitted to myself that I was struggling not with my (our) weekly finances, but my (our) future finances.  Meanwhile, in May of 2017 our daughter Elise heard from God that it was time for her to move on from serving as a Junior High Youth Pastor at Bethel, a Mega Church in San Jose; and moving her Ministry to be a Generational Pastor at Re: Church in the small town of Rio Vista.

Sandi and I started visiting Elise more and more as the summer of 2017 went on, and we came to love Rio Vista as we love “Small Town America”.  One day I was helping Elise with a project and needed some supplies from the local Ace Hardware.  On my way to Ace I saw a “Home For Sale” sign that sparked my interest in “how much?”.  In looking it up on Zillow I found out that it was two-thirds the cost of homes in Brentwood.  Over the next several days God spoke to me over and over again about moving to full retirement and get out of the financial debt we were living in (questions six and ten from above).  Sandi and I have had a policy for the last thirty-three years of marriage; if God comes to us three times, we have to share it with each other.  So now I had to share what God was telling me.  This news meant a lot as we had made a lot of friends at BBF and had made some wonderful friends in a town we loved, that would now be twenty-five miles and a bridge toll away.  

Within a few weeks, we had our Brentwood home listed with our friend and realtor, Missey James (note in 2005, we were the first and second sale of her career).  Missey kept us on course through the bumpy real estate ride of having more than thirty people coming through our house over an eight week period.  Our home finally sold in October, to only fall apart in November as the buyer couldn’t get financing to stick.  Due to losing the sale of our home, we lost a house in Rio Vista that we had put an offer on.  It was nothing fancy, but met our needs.  We refused to look again until we had a firm offer on our Brentwood house.  In Early December, we had a firm offer, in excitement, that night went searched for houses on Zillow.  A house was listed that very day and was going to have an open house on the weekend.  It was inside an HOA and an Active Adult 55+ community which we had resisted.  We decided that we needed to go and see it and a few others that were also having open houses.  Long story short, we called Missey before leaving Rio Vista to tell he we had found the perfect home; more than we ever could have had expected.  Within a few days our offer was accepted and Christmas was upon us.  Moving at Christmas is nothing new for us as we moved from Santa Clara Valley to Oakley on December 9, 1989, and to Brentwood from Oakley on December 23, 2005.  

We have lived in our new home in Trilogy, Rio Vista one year this weekend.  Trilogy does have HOA fees, but a lot less than our HOA fees at Apple Hill Estates, Brentwood and a lot more amenities.  There are many days that we don’t even leave Trilogy as we use the athletic facilities six or the seven days a week.  We swim in our indoor Junior Olympic pool, I speed walk on the indoor track above the pool and do the weight circuit in our gym.  Most days I enjoy the Club House Lobby after I finish my 1mile walk and 25-30 minute weight training circuit.  Sandi swims nearly a mile daily and has broken the 1 mile mark on several occasions. 

The Main Club House (there are currently two with two more opening within the next twelve to eighteen months) has a Cafe’, Computer Lab, meeting rooms, Billiards Hall, and  an exercise room with a floating floor besides the weight room, track and swimming pool.

So long story short, simply listen to God and he will Bless you.