Gospa House was a gift from God. When we started looking for a place to buy in St. Julians, near to our school, we found that the prices were high and anything that was within our means was totally unsuitable for our everyday needs.
Our estate agent looked quite shocked when I told her what we were looking for. “A house, not a flat, in front of the sea, near the school, (the most expensive area in St. Julians), at least two bedrooms and possibly some space for a small office where we can work at home if needed.”. That was the list. She nearly laughed but resisted and we got a wry smile from her instead. She said politely, “it’s not possible, but I can show you what we have, and you will see what I mean. You have to be realistic.”
So, we went to see several places and we began to see how impossible our task was. In one property on which we were perhaps tempted to compromise just a little too much, our mind was finally settled when our lovely dog, Lady, seemed to be showing a keen interest and was busy ‘inspecting’ the place while we talked. When she had finished sniffing around in every corner, she promptly walked into the poor man’s kitchen and deposited a smelly poo on the floor. We were all deeply embarrassed and upset and then wondered why it had happened. Lady had never done such a thing in her entire life, not in our house or in any other and she had been in very many belonging to friends and business partners. She came with us everywhere, even to the school. We decided that perhaps something was saying that this was not the place for us.
For a while, we stopped looking and we just left it in God’s hands. Clare, a girl who was working for us, told us she had seen a house for sale just around the corner from the school. It was on the sea front and in a row of houses that we had often looked at when we went to the beach down there. We walked down the road to see it and saw that it was in, fact in an extremely bad state. The roof had fallen in and, when I walked in to see it, I felt it was not for us.
I was about to return to the office when Clare suggested we look at the corner house on the same road. I doubted we could afford it as it was bigger than all the others and was in a slightly better condition.
After some enquiries we managed to get a viewing with the owners. They were more than gracious and dropped the price to what we could afford and then allowed us to pay 10% of it at a later date. Praise God! The impossible had happened and we set about the refurbishments which we knew were going to be extensive.
How much love and prayers went into making this our home. The minute I had walked in, I felt the lord saying, “Here, this is it.” We decided to call it “Gospa House” which was the name we had wanted to use for our ‘house of prayer and healing’ which was envisaged while we were in Ampleforth and praying with Fr. Alexander McCabe and others.
In 12 years, we continued to make Gospa House our home and to fill it with as much prayer as possible. But in 2013, after coming back from an evening at the cinema and walking through the center of Paceville (the night club center of Malta) I distinctly heard the Lord telling us to leave. I told David what I had heard, and he nodded his head, seeming to understand that it was possibly a good idea.
Not long after, with our school now on the verge of closing down, we reluctantly put the house on the market. It was not selling, and we were not really pushing it too much. In fact, we took it back off the market for another year and only put it back on the market again in 2014, keeping it in low profile with no sign outside. It was only later, early in 2015, that we seriously decided to sell and began to bring in painters and decorators to prepare it properly for viewing. We prayed “Lord, let this house go to good Christians so that it will continue to serve You.” During one such prayer I made while walking through the house, I seemed to see the lord smile and had the sensation that He chuckled, as if to say, “I have my plans!”