What a year and a half it has been since my last post! I didn’t mean to quit sharing, but our big adventures stopped, and life got back to “normal”. After telling Abe multiple times, “Wouldn’t it be funny if God was having us fix the house up for ourselves?” and thinking it to myself countless times as everything took longer than expected, we moved into our house just before Thanksgiving of 2022. So much for flipping it. We now officially live in Andrews, SC. The house still has a lot of work on the outside that needs done, but life got busy and there’s always something else that comes first.
Now, we’re on to our next big adventure. And I do mean BIG. Abe and I started talking about starting a coffee shop. It was just a fun little dream. The kind we all have that we don’t really expect to happen, but it’s fun to think about anyway. Then we saw a really cool old empty building on main street that looked like a good location, and Abe started asking around about it – right after someone else bought it. We could have rented the building from the new owners, but if we did start a coffee shop and pay for the necessary renovations we wanted to own rather than investing our money to fix up someone else’s building. That was fun, but I guess it wasn’t God’s plan for us. No big deal. The talk died away and I figured the dream was in the past, so I let it go.
There was another empty building in town that we’d driven past several times and thought it could be a good place for someone to do something with, but we really wanted something in the middle of Main Street. Still, every time we drove past it, we saw potential. Then one day Abe drove by and saw a “for sale” sign. He talked to me, and we decided that he would call and get a price. The price was good, so he made arrangements with the owner for us to look inside. It was perfect. The steal building with a wooden front was a restaurant a few years ago, and I could see the whole layout for our coffee shop as soon as I stepped inside. The cashier’s counter is just the right size for us to work behind, and there is a small room that will be perfect for people to hold meetings in. It has a kitchen area in the back, and we hope to make use of it in the future. And it’s on a full acre corner lot, with plenty of room for a drive-thru window.
We prayed about it, then we jumped. We were the first ones to make an offer and the owner accepted it. God worked in what I have come to believe is His usual way and, after delay after delay after delay, we closed August 31st – the final day on the purchase agreement that we signed, thinking it gave us at least a month more than we needed. A day later, and the owner could have decided to sell to one of the many other potential buyers who came to him after us. We are now in the process of turning the empty building on an overgrown gravel lot into a thriving coffee shop. And because of that, this website will become a business page, though I’ll keep the blog posts and maybe add an occasional other post as a reminder of Abe’s and my adventures that we have been so blessed to have.
Now it’s time to begin the hard work that will be required for us to get to the excitement of running our own business. I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. Even now, the thought of all the red tape and regulations any business has to deal with is overwhelming, but I know that God is in charge and the success of our business is in His hands. It’s our job to simply do the best we can, serve Him as well as we can, and let Him handle the rest.
God is good. He's been taking care of me in so many ways.
I miss you guys and hope to come have a cup of coffee with you one of these days.