Lauren in Peru: A little bit of paint goes a long way.....

The landlord of my house lives underneath me in the first floor. I have grown to love her and her granddaughter. We have a very close relationship and talk all the time together. One day we were talking and she mentioned that her neighbor said, “what has happened to your house?”. It is ugly. You used to always keep your house pretty. She told me that after her daughter died she just did not have the energy or the money to keep the house up. Her money was now used to raise her granddaughter. It was true her house did look bad, the paint was peeling off the walls, her granddaughter had colored on one of the walls, and her house just needed a little TLC. God really touched my heart that day to paint her house. I also knew that a lot of her family and friends would be coming over in a couple of weeks on the one year anniversary of the death of her daughter. If you know me well, a lot of times, God gives me a spontaneous idea and I run with it without realizing how much work it is really going to take. BUT it is always worth it. A couple of days later, I asked her what color she would like her living room to be. She told me she wanted it to be two colors; I asked to borrow one of her pillows so I could buy her paint for a little surprise. I did not tell her that I was going to paint her house, but that night Nicchola and I went to go buy paint. We came back and surprised her with 2 buckets of new paint. She was so excited. The next day I spent all day until the middle of the night painting. We are so ghetto that by the end to be able to finish we were adding more water to the paint and wringing out paint with our hands from the brush. The house looked like it had had an extreme makeover. 2 days later, I realized that since it was dark when we finished, that it was really lacking a second coat. We went and bought 2 more buckets of paint and painted a second coat over the whole living room. John and Nicchola helped me a ton! The lady downstairs also helped as well and cooked us some good homemade Peruvian food. It was such a blessing because the 2^nd day her son was there and he made the comment to me that he knows we are doing this for a bigger purpose. The reason that we are painting her house is not because we are passionate about painting but because we want to show the love of Christ. We got to have about a 2 hour conversation about the gospel. It was such a God ordained opportunity. I am pretty sure they both are not believers, it was an awesome opportunity to show and talk about God’s love for us. Below are the before and after pics!