Buying our First House
Rodger and Cindy Copp
We lived in a trailer home in the town of Grand Forks, North Dakota. In March of 1984 I started a new job at the University of North Dakota. We could start thinking about buying a house now.
We began looking and praying in the summer of 1984.
We’re not sure when this took place, but it was the first house we ever looked at. It was in the city of East Grand Forks, MN. It had been on the market for 2 years. We looked at it on a Saturday and intended to submit an offer on Monday. Before we were able to submit our offer, someone else did and theirs was accepted. That house was destroyed in the historic Red River Valley flood of 1997.
We were disappointed that we didn’t get the home. However, we soon realized that city living was not for us, so we began looking for country property.
We looked at a repossessed rural Grand Forks, ND house. We exchanged offers a couple times with the bank. They declined my final offer, and I walked away. I refused to pay more than a certain amount. My wife was not going to work outside the home, and we were not going to put our children in daycare.
We looked at another rural home west of Grand Forks. We made an offer contingent on the sale of our trailer. The offer was accepted. Then we waited. We decided that our trailer would be the controlling factor that God would use to tell us when the time was right. I refused to take less than what I was asking for the trailer. Our trailer was on the market for months. No one ever looked at it, let alone make an offer.
In the fall of 1984, my job required that I go to Africa for three months. I would be leaving in January 1985. The university was very supportive and arranged for my family (wife and two children) to accompany me. They paid for our passports, airfare and living quarters in Africa. My son was the only one in school at the time. Despite some resistance from our Christian school, we decided to teach him the remaining half of first grade ourselves.
In late 1984 we withdrew the offer on the home before leaving for Africa. Upon our return in the spring of 1985, we planned to re-submit our offer on that property, but it had just sold. This was the last house we looked at in ND. Our trailer still had not generated any interest. We kept praying and waiting.
With our hopes dashed yet again, the summer of 1985 was extremely busy for us. The university had me, and thus my entire family, on the road most of that summer. We left the trailer on the market, and we stopped looking for a house.
The homeschooling concept started gaining traction during the mid-80’s. Because of our experience teaching our son in Africa, we started reading everything we could get our hands on about home schooling. There was no doubt that we needed to homeschool our kids. North Dakota was prosecuting parents that were teaching their children at home. Our only option was to move across the river, into Minnesota, which allowed homeschooling. We decided to look for rural property again as soon as our travel diminished.
During the summer of 1985. The trailer park where we lived made a rule that if you sold your own trailer, it had to be moved out of the trailer park. You could pay $1000 for them to sell it, and then it could remain. Not only could we not sell our trailer, but now it had to be moved out. I refused to pay $1000 (a lot of money in 1985) so that my trailer could remain in the park. Our faith was put to the test yet again. We remained steadfast, knowing when God’s timing was right, He would make everything work out.
In late winter of 1985, we put an ad in the paper looking for rural property in East Grand Forks, MN.
We got three calls. The first two were out of our price range. The third was the interesting one.
The Call
Jerome Gunderson was a schoolteacher in Grand Forks, ND and he lived in MN. I asked him why he was selling. The school district didn’t like to promote people that lived outside the school district. He planned on moving to Grand Forks, where he had purchased a piece of land. He was going to buy a trailer to move into while he built a new house. My exact words were, “Have I got a deal for you!” He asked, “Why, do you have a trailer?”
We moved in around Memorial Day 1986. Jerome’s family came up from southern MN with their grain trucks. They picked up our stuff first and took it to our new home in the country. They picked up Jerome’s stuff and brought it to Grand Forks. A couple of trips and we were completely moved. We even got to keep our appliances, which were normally sold with the house.
Closing Thoughts
We could not have known in 1984 that we would want to teach our children at home two years later. God knew! Because we insisted on leaving this all up to Him and allowing Him complete control. He would do something for us that only He could do. My family serves an amazing God!
This was the first of several similar stories of faith that we’ve experienced in our 50 years of marriage.
Jesus taught the concept of waiting and trusting God in the following three parables.
- Luke 11:5-8
- Luke 18:2-5
- Matthew 17:20 You’ll need to research how the mustard seed was used in those days to understand what Jesus meant here.
My plea to you is this. Keep praying and WAIT for God to reveal His will to you. It will be obvious.