Lets start by saying right away that even though I will tell about our house project in this letter; I will also challenge the readers (you) financially. So if you do not want to hear a financial challenge, then I suggest that you only read until where I warn you about the oncoming financial part.
 
The building of the house started with the preparation of the land during March and during April we have been able to prepare the foundation and build the foundational structure. In a few days we should be able to start building the floor, if everything goes good!
 
Here are some pictures of how it looks like now!

Warning, from here it will be about the finances!
 
Lets start from the beginning!
When we started thinking about buying a property and building a house, God started to lead people to donate special donations to us, through those donations we bought the land and also got about 10% of the total construction budget saved. In it self it is really a wonder, since we have had some extra expenses like an outreach to Israel and Sweden and we also had a major engine rebuild on our car.
 
We received a private loan from a person in order to start the building of the house, about 20-25% of the total budget, so we had/have about 1/3 of the total funds for building.
Now we are at a stage where we need to buy a large amount of material at once in order to continue, this being the reason for me writing this!
We want to challenge you directly that if you can / want to be part of building our house. You can do so by a one-time donation or also buy monthly donations for the next 6-9 months while we build our house.
 
There is another way of participating, if you have means that you do not wish to donate, but would be willing to give a low interest loan to us, we would be interested in this (we would proceed with details together with you).
 
For ways to support us, please go to www.sarajarvet.com/support-info.html
 

The “normal” people would finance their first house by taking a loan at the bank, after saving enough for about 10-15% of the price. We are not sure how God wants to take care of our house build…  It will for sure be an adventure!
We have been able to get donations for about 22% of the total cost, including buying the land and getting the drawings and permits done! God has been very faithful!
Now we are stepping into the next phase of building in faith, the actual building part!
We need about $85,000 more to come in to be able to finish to build our home. And we are praying that a big part of it would come in during this year!
Maybe you could pray about if you should be part of our dream, and to go to our donations page and donate some funds towards our house build! (or for our friends in Sweden and Finland)
We are very thankful for every donation that we have received so far and every donation that we will receive!
 
We have pondered about the possibility to get a loan, but it is virtually impossible for us to get one from our banks in Sweden and Finland. And the banks here in Costa Rica have a really high interest rate, so that is not really an option (and I doubt that we qualify for those with our income being donations abroad).
 
So the only loans that might be available are loans from individual/churches/businesses/ministries. We are praying about if this would be a way God wants us to fund our house, but so far we do not have a lead on any loans.
 
It is great to be able to walk this walk with God, as He directs us. Our prayer is that we would not try to do things our way, but do things His way!

We will finally have an extra room for many different purposes. The room will serve as a study, guest room, crafts room and probably many other purposes too.
So far it has been hard to prepare teachings at home, with kids running around and the only place where to sit and prepare has been by the kitchen table. So most of the preparations have been made while the kids have been at school/base or then late night when everyone is sleeping.
 
The room is planned to be about 18,5 m2 or about 200 sq ft, so we will have space for a queen size bed and a dividing bookshelf to create a bit of privacy for the office space that will have a desk with a comfortable chair, we will have room for our books (and more to come) and all of the crafts/scrapbooking things that Laura has & will get.
 
It will be great to have a place set apart for our computer, so it will not be laying around in our living room all the time.
It will also be great to have a place to host guests, without having them sleep on the floor in our boys’ room (although if families come, their kids might still do it) or at the base. So far we have had several people visit us, and have had to rent an extra house for them (and it is not available anymore) or to have them stay at the base (like my mom is doing at this very moment I write this).
 
So all in all, we are super excited to have some more room, and to be able to host people without having to work out how to do it. And what a joy it will be to prepare teachings without all the fuzz attached to the preparation.

Oh the wonderful day when we get to have our own walk-in closet for the clothes!
Right now we are sharing a smallish wardrobe as a whole family! We have one little shelf each for our clothes with Laura, and the boys are sharing one shelf.
Needless to say that we are tired of having no space for our clothes!
Also for storing our luggage, they are right now situated on top of the wardrobe!
 
In our new closet we will have several shelves for each of us, and I am planning to light every shelf with LED lights, so that we will not have some dark places (where the possible scorpions could hide, and get us with their nasty little stingers).
 
I am visioning a closet that will add organized storage space for us, where our luggage will not be visible to our room any more. But most important is the fact that our clothes will be in order, and we will have enough hanging space for clothes too.
 
I never knew one could get such a joy out of thinking about a walk-in closet. I guess our house and the space we have right now, is just not enough to feel joy about it, even though we are super thankful for having a roof over our heads.

This time we will have my lovely wife Laura writing the blog, so Laura this post is all yours!
 
I love to have people over and have dinner with us! It´s great to hang out and talk and enjoy good food with friends- and even make new friends by doing that. I love to be hospitable in that way.
Sometimes it has been frustrating to try to cook in our tiny kitchen, and trying to fit everyone around our table that´s meant for 4 people- someone has to sit on our sofa table, because there´s not enough chairs:). Now, having the plans for the new house I´ve started to dream about the new kitchen. That I could actually fit to do everything in the kitchen area, and not needing to use the dining table, or sofa table to spread out my cooking pans, since I don´t have enough counter space. That we could have a bigger table where we could fit more guests to sit.  And yes, I´m absolutely dreaming about having an isle in the kitchen (because they look so cute) and also I am dreaming of a dishwasher!! (I know Kimmo dreams about that one too, haha!) We will also put a Finnish “astiankuivauskaappi” (a cabinet for drying dishes), just because we´re Finns, I guess. We will also want to get an electric oven, because even though the gas stove is great and fast, I´ve had enough trouble of trying to bake in the gas oven!
 
It´s not very typical here that people buy a full kitchen, they rather just buy things that happen to be on sale or they like it, and many times they can quite mix and match combos. We´ve looked into some full kitchens, but the prices seem to be quite high. Not quite, I mean REALLY high. And those moments I really miss IKEA, where I could get an affordable kitchen. We have even considered of bringing a container from the States or somewhere and load it up with furniture and home appliances (and the kitchen) because those things are expensive here. But I guess the taxes and the transportation would make it quite high as well. Well, we just have to keep looking and hoping and praying we could find some affordable and nice looking options!
 
Thank you for reading!
Laura
 
PS.  By the way, it just makes me really happy when I find something pretty (to my taste) with a good price here (not so typical!). One day I found a store, where they have reeaally cute lamps in good prices! I felt like a winner :D
 

We have never had a TV in our home with Laura (except for a few times when we have stayed in our friends´ houses a few months), we have realized that we do not really need one.
But on the other hand, we do really enjoy good movies. So we came to the conclusion that we would have a projector in the living room, so it would double as our movie room. That way it is not a highly visible part of the furnishings, but rather just an empty wall painted in a gray, and a projector up in the ceiling.
 
The sound I hope to be able to set up with a discreet wireless system, but we could also prepare for a wired system during the build.
 
Now my job is to research what kind of projector and sound system to buy and which shade of gray (no pun intended!) to paint the wall with!
If anyone has any good insight for choosing the projector and/or sound system, let us know!

I know some might think that we don´t need it! And that is true, we do not need it, but we really enjoy a good sauna! And it is so relaxing, so we really want it.
 
Some things you need to know about us weird people from Finland, is that although Finland only has about 5,5 million inhabitants there is more than 2 million saunas.
Finns who have moved to almost any place in the world have been known to build saunas, sometimes the sauna is built before the actual house! The sauna in itself can look very different from other saunas; there are small saunas and big saunas, there are wooden heated saunas and there are electric saunas, there are also the smoke saunas (they are the best, although they are not that common).
On our trips we have build a tarp sauna in Jamaica and Canada, and realized how important it is to have the right kind of stones for the heat and löyly (the steam that comes from throwing water on the hot stones).
A sauna for a Finn is not luxury, as it might seem for people from other countries, but rather it is a big part of our culture.
 
Our plan is to build a wooden heated sauna, and we hope that someone from Finland who has built saunas before will come and help build it!
The sauna stove (kiuas in Finnish) is likely that we need to bring/ship it from Finland and it is probable that we would ship the stones at the same time (because most of the local stones are not suitable as sauna stones- we Finns are very peculiar about our saunas! :) )

I will start a little multi part series with details on the house.
I might have a guest writer appear at times (AKA my lovely wife).

The idea with these small detail descriptions is that you can follow along in how we think and what we are aiming to achieve with the building of our house. We hope that you will enjoy the process of getting to know the future Casa Sarajarvi.

I feel like every day I start to have a greater need for a bigger home, with the kids growing and getting more and more active, I need my own space to prepare for preaching’s and teaching, and just to study and also to relax.
One of the facts of being a missionary and actually enduring long term, is that you have a place where you recharge your batteries, and for us that is the real reason to have a home of our own. With all the small details that we are going to present to you during the coming posts!