Unemployment

I am so excited about writing about this part of my life. I'm skipping a whole lot of years to tell this. But with the economy the way it right now, this is such a marvelous true account of part of the journey.
After leaving the pastorate on the Indian reservation we decided to build a house. We'd bought 5 acres of land some years before and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to build our dream home. Bill was still working full time for G.M. There had been rumors of the plant closing but it was still at least 5 years away and we figured we'd have lots of equity in our house by then.
We moved a 16' camper on to a friend's yard not far from the property. We had no hookups and no electricity. Bill and I slept in single beds across the camper from each other, and we had to use our friend's house to shower, use the bathroom and to cook. We used the laundrymat to wash our clothes. The project began in July with friends and family doing the work. And then it started to rain which held up the process time and again. To make things even more complicated an acquaintence of ours was a contractor and told us what we could build the house for. He was WAY short! We contracted out the basement and the man who'd been doing this for years had no clue how to do a house at an angle, but didn't tell us, and got it all wrong so every board for the house itself had to be measured and cut to different lengths.
Discouragment began to set in. I sat in our camper and cried not sure I'd be able to endure the many months to come. The thought suddenly came to me "what if we never finish our house and get to live in it?" What if we end up living in a carboard box on the street somewhere like so many others? And I questioned, "where is God in all of this?" I then asked myself, "Do I serve God becasue of what He does for me, for what I can get out of Him, or do I serve Him because He is God?" I thought long and hard about that question and came to the conclusion that if God never did another thing for me I had no right to complain. He had sent His only Son to earth to die in my place so that I could live forever. Because of my faith in Him I had eternal life.
I opened the Bible and immediately found, "Thou the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, thrugh the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. Habakkuk 3:17-18. I made up my mind right then that I would be faithful to the Lord for the long haul no matter what happened. Little did I know what was ahead.
Summer turned into Fall and it was time to find a place to live out of the cold. Bill's parents graciously offered to take us in. It was the first part of December and the men were stringing the wiring for the electricity when the bomb shell dropped. GM would be closing its door in Syracuse. The bank that had approved us for a construction loan decided that because of GM's announcement, they would pull the plug on the project. So here we were with a house not completed and no money to complete it. Bill was about to be unemployed and we had GM sized bills..
Stay tuned.. it gets better.