When I was 20, I was sitting at a bus stop on the island of Terceira in the Azores. I was contemplating about what I wanted out of life. I decided at the time that I wanted to be wealthy. I know. Who doesn’t? But, I put a lot more thought into it than just a fleeting moment. I tried to determine how someone becomes wealthy in the first place. I determined that the only way I could become wealthy was for me to find some way to give someone nothing and have them give me something in return. It was months later when my dad wrote me a letter explaining that he was buying rental property that the idea came to mind that I could give someone nothing and get something in return through real estate.
When I returned from Portugal and the Azores, I wasn't sure how to invest in real estate, so I took a class at the local community college-Real Estate Principles. My instructor taught me that in order to be rich, all I needed was 3 friends. He taught that I needed a real estate agent, a mortgage broker, and a property manager. I concluded that if I bought a house, a fixer specifically, I could repair the home and rent out the other rooms to start my investing career. Prior to living in Portugal, I had saved approximately $7,500. The intent was that my parents would use this money to pay for my time abroad. When I returned home, my parents gave me the money I had saved back to me. They said this was my “reward” for serving an honorable mission for the Portuguese people, so I now had my down payment. I quickly got a good job that paid well, but it was a part-time job.
At this time I was still single, but actively searching for a wife. While I was searching for a wife and searching for my first investment property, my father found a home near my siblings’ high school. It was a fixer and for sale. It was what most would consider the worst house in the best neighborhood. About this same time, I started dating my would-be wife. I ended up purchasing that house. Between the time I made the offer and the time I bought the house, I was engaged. A month later, I was married. Because I had a home that was at least “livable,” we decided to move in rather than get an apartment (which we couldn’t have afforded with the house payment, too). After going over ideas for months with my father (my father was a partner in the deal) and wife about what I wanted to do with the house, one day it rained heavily.
It was the first rain while my wife and I lived in the house. With the heavy downpour, we found we had a hole in the roof above the kitchen. The rain poured down into the cabinets. There was so much rain that the water was literally flowing out of the cabinets and over onto the floor. What made matters worse we had bouillon cubes in the cupboards, so it looked like nasty, filthy water. Beneath the floor was a root cellar. If it had not been for that, our kitchen would have been flooded. It was then I decided to take action. I nixed all the previous plans and just decided to take over. I climbed up on the roof and started tearing away at the shingles. I found 13 layers of shingles on that kitchen roof! Code says you can have no more than 3! Because I had now torn into my roof, I had to follow through. There would be no more planning on what we might do. I was doing it!
Over the next 18 months, I worked on that house. I tore off the roof and rebuilt it. I added studs to raise the ceiling from 6.5 feet tall to 10 feet high (yes, we had ceiling fixtures what would hit my taller friends as they walked inside my home). I added a 2nd bathroom and enlarged the existing bathroom. I installed new plumbing, electrical, windows, flooring, drywall, appliances, and fixtures. Every day that I had time available, I was working on the house. While I was working on the house and at my part-time job, my wife became pregnant. The 2 days after my wife gave birth, I was spending approximately 20 hours each day working inside the home just to make it livable. This meant we had water in the bathroom for washing dishes in the bathtub, and a stove in the kitchen so we could cook. Yes, dishes in the bathtub-we didn't have a sink in the kitchen yet and it was more important that I was able to take a shower before I went to work than it was to have running water in the kitchen. Up to her birth, we didn’t even have a room drywalled, yet. When we moved in, I had one room completely drywalled, walls textured, and painted. We didn’t have drapes, curtains, or a rod in the closet to hang our clothes. We had to buy some fabric at Wal-Mart to make “curtains.”
We ended up moving in 3 days after my daughter was born. Prior to that, my wife and I had been living with my older siblings and their families for the length of the pregnancy while I was working on the home. I spent hours and hours every day working on that home. At the same time, I was going to college and working. I'm telling you this because I spent nearly a full "mission" on this house. When we sold the house, after having owned it for 2 years, we had tripled the value of the house. It was not an easy undertaking. I worked on installing the roofing shingles in July and August during the day. It was hot and hard to keep myself motivated. The whole time I worked on the roof, God spared the rain. The last day, as I was finishing the roofing caps across the top seam of the roof, the rain came down. I knew God had blessed me in my diligence and hard work. It was much like Nephi building a boat. Things I didn’t know how to do, I went to YouTube to learn-and this was before YouTube had a ton of information like it does now. I learned how to solder copper from YouTube (and other websites) as an example. I also had to go down the street to see other homes in varying levels of completion to learn how to build the walls so the windows and doors would be installed correctly. It was tough!
I learned the value of work throughout my younger years when my dad would take us to the zoo and we would load the back of his pick-up with elephant, tiger, and rhino manure. We did something similar when we moved to New Mexico and repeated the process with cow manure. I had to grow a garden for my family and work in the field every Saturday. We had chores inside the home and had to cook meals for the whole family of 10. I had my first paying job when I was about 12. I got paid $2/hour to pull weeds at house down the street. Later, I got paid $5/hour to dig out from underneath a house so it would meet termite clearance (this while I was 13). I learned that hard work breeds great rewards, one of which was great rest.
I know that God wants us to work diligently. He wants us to work hard, but smart. As I continue to work hard for my family, I know that God will take care of me and we will "prosper in the land.
Photo by Kévin et Laurianne Langlais on Unsplash