The man leaned forward, elbows on his desk, and asked Melissa and me, "Do you know why so many American marriages end in divorce?" He had already implied the answer to his own question, but he wanted to hear it back from us.
Melissa didn't bite. She responded quietly, "Well, I suppose mainly because God is not at the center of a lot of marriages."
It was not the answer he was looking for, but his eyes lit up as he recognized a new angle.
[For the record, the "correct" answer was supposed to be "because couples don't start their marriages by taking a good honeymoon at some far off time-share." Seriously!]
He pursued this new angle: "Oh, you go to church? My family and I go to church here in Myrtle Beach..."
After two or three minutes of church small talk, it was back to business: "I believe God knows how stressful our lives are. He knows we need to relax. Even He relaxed on the 7th day of creation. AND He wants us to enjoy the beauty of His creation." So that settled it: God Himself wanted us to upgrade our time-share.
He excused himself from the tiny office to get his supervisor. [It was time for the old "Good Cop/Bad Cop" part of the sales presentation - Melissa and I had sat through enough of these pitches over the past eight years to know what was coming next. We sat through one of these sale pitches each time we used our time-share because they offer freebies if you do.]
Alone together, I turned to Melissa and said, "OK. If Jesus walks through that door and says with His own lips, 'I want you to go another $30,000 in debt in order to have bigger and better vacations', then let's do this!"
Yes. $30,000. That was the smallest "upgrade" possible on our time-share. It was an absolutely ridiculous conversation, especially since we had leveled with our salesman from the moment we sat down in his office: 1) We were meeting with him in order to get the promised freebies [Free tickets to a local water park in this case] for our kids' sake. 2) We have enjoyed the use of our time-share BUT when we first bought it eight years ago, I had literally lost three nights of sleep in a fit of financial anxiety because we really could not afford it. 3) We were currently not in the position to buy ANYTHING more and we certainly would not consider going further into debt to add anything to our current time-share plan.
His response at the beginning of the meeting? "That's OK, because I just want to update you about some improvements with your BlueGreen time-share. I am not going to try to sell you anything."
And he had said it with a straight face.
So when he brought in his supervisor, Melissa and I felt compelled to repeat that there was zero possibility of us "upgrading" our time-share. Nevertheless, the two of them now kept pressing forward:
"BUT ... when The Drama Queen (now age 9)grows up and gets married, don't you want to be able to send her to Hawaii for her honeymoon?"
"BUT ... don't you see how, rather than an expense, this upgraded time-share will become a source of income as friends and family members will flock to you and give you money so they can also enjoy it?"
"BUT ... don't you want your kids to be well-traveled and exposed to new places?"
"BUT ... $30,000 is a good deal. In the future, when the price goes up, you'll regret not jumping on board when the price was only $30,000."
They gave it their all.
"Sorry. No money. Not going to happen."
When the supervisor left, and Melissa and I thought for sure the presentation was finally over, our salesman said, "One last thing ... I want to show you a website on our computer that will demonstrate all the benefits of this upgrade."
I think that's when I finally laughed.
Our salesman was deeply offended. But even now he saw a new angle - guilt: "I can't believe a professing Christian would laugh at someone like that. I'm just trying to do my job."
We still didn't upgrade, but I did apologize and explained that I wasn't laughing AT him, but at the situation: We were so eager to get out of the meeting so we could get on with our week of vacation and he was determined to continue talking about a product we simply were not considering buying.
His irritated response: "But you KNEW this was a sales presentation when you signed up for it!"
I refrained from laughing this time, because I didn't want to slow us down again; we pretended to be impressed with the website and then he, dejected, showed us to the window where a happy lady gave us our water park tickets. We bolted for the door.
Fast forward about eight months to last night and a table at Olive Garden. Melissa and I were on our first date in months. In the midst of all the talk of moving to Haiti and selling this and throwing that, we had yet to talk about the time-share. Melissa had assumed we would be keeping it; I had assumed we would not.
If the time-share were free and clear that would be one thing, but it costs us around $500 per year in "maintenance fees". Also, although we've really enjoyed our times at the resorts each year (and Melissa is an expert at stretching our condo days as far as they can go), our summers from here on out are bound to be rather unpredictable. And I'm not sure a week at a resort in Myrtle Beach or Virginia or Michigan will be a top priority in coming summers. We anticipate getting back to the States each summer to visit family and friends and probably do some ongoing fundraising.
Melissa agreed we should check into selling it. If we can get back some of the money we invested in it, we could use that to pay down remaining debts before we enter the mission field.
So like most of the Sells I have listed on this blog, the time-share is on the market, but not necessarily sold yet.
Which reminds me, dear reader ... God knows how stressful your life is ...
... and I believe He wants YOU to buy this time-share from us! ;-)
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