We Have A Home!

We finally have a permanent apartment.  It has taken a lot of effort, but we have a signed lease and keys to the apartment.  The challenge has been to structure the apartment lease as a corporate lease rather than for us as individuals.

The Church will be leasing the apartment and making the monthly rental payments.  In turn, the amount of the rent will be deducted from our ward's missionary fund.  And we make a contribution to the ward's missionary fund each month for the amount of the rent.  The advantage of doing this is that our monthly rent will be tax deductible for us.

The difficulty is that for the apartment complex where we wanted to rent, corporate rental agreements require much more paperwork and more approvals.  Since there are missionaries already living in an apartment in the complex, we thought it would be an easy process.  However, since the missionaries' lease was signed, the apartment complex was sold to a large property investment company in New York.  They have instituted a number of new requirements.  The local people are just learning the new corporate process, so they wanted to proceed very carefully to make sure everything was done correctly.

We finally ended up sitting in the leasing office for 2 1/2 hours this evening (including an hour past their closing time) while they concluded the application process and received approvals from their corporate office.  They wanted proof that was approved to sign leases for the Church.  My ministers certificate issued to all missionaries seemed to satisfy their concerns.  Although it made for a long day for them, they were very gracious in working to getting everything finished.  We were in a rush because we are supposed to have furniture delivered tomorrow.  So we will finally have a home for the next 17 months.