Tuesday July 8th was finally the day that we got to sign the papers to close on our house, YEAH!!! Actually... due to my work situation I (Christina) was not able to sign the papers for the house. Ben and I had to get a notarized Power of Attorney paper signed in order that Ben could sign for me on all the papers. Ben did a great job working through the mound of papers that they gave to him. I was able to make it for part of the signing when I got off of work. It was so cool to have them hand us the keys to our home and to immediately be able to move in. On Wednesday of last week Ben had the youth leader and 6 of the youth group members come to help us move our stuff from storage to our house. So we now have all of our stuff moved in, which is such a great feeling. We are loving our house and loving the settling in/decorating process. We have so much space to work with that it is not too difficult to have boxes everywhere. Slowly yet surely we are making it our home. We also have had a major need of buying a second car, and it was great because the Lord led us to just the right car. The second car is making our lives easier as our jobs are far apart from eachother.
Speaking of our jobs... we are settling in quite nicely. I started work last Monday the 7th for the Department of Child Services. I am in training for a total of 12 weeks, but have the first week under my belt. I am enjoying my training immensely and learning a lot that will be beneficial when I get put out on the field. I am in a class (they call us a cohort) of 22 people and we will be with eachother in this same training class until our graduation on September 29th. They are great people and we are learning how to work together as a team, which is essential for the type of job that I will be doing. Ben's job is also going well. It has been a bit of a slow start though for him since much of his focus has had to be on our move. The church was very flexible this past week with our closing and move to allow Ben the time to help us get settled and situated. Sunday, Ben took the opportunity to introduce himself to many of the volunteers and to observe the Sunday morning ministry in order to get a good idea of how he could best serve this ministry. It was very beneficial for him and he looks forward to putting all of his ideas into practice.
Praise the Lord for all of this coming into place for us. We can clearly see His hand in all that we are doing!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
When Things Go Not As Expected
On Monday night after work Ben and I rode into the sunset to our new destination of Indianapolis. For the past couple of months our expectation had been that we would spend the first couple of nights in a hotel waiting for our house to close on July 2nd. We had the impression that all of our paperwork was done and that they were just waiting until it got closer to finalize all of it. Well about 10 days ago our plans started to change when our lenders made us aware that they were missing paperwork from us and they needed it urgently to settle on our house. Since that day, each day we have been scrambling to get all of the necessary documents that they need in order to finish this process. Needless to say it has been a frustrating 10 days working with these people and we are not yet done yet. We are now hoping for a Monday or Tuesday closing. In the meantime... our church has been wonderful to work with and they are putting us up in a hotel for as long as we need. Ben and I have been trying to keep busy getting other necessary errands done in order that when our house closes we can focus on getting settled.
The other challenge we were up against was that our moving company needed to drop off our stuff on Wednesday, but we didn't have the keys to our new house in order to move the stuff in. The cost to have them deliver at a later date would have been $500 so we quickly thought of a plan B to put our stuff in storage. The Lord blessed us with a company that is fabulous to work with. They are kind, flexible and extremely generous. After explaining our situation to them they told us that they had a moving truck that we could use for free when we needed to move our stuff out of storage. That was a huge relief for us and an opportunity for us to see the Lord at work on our behalf. We ended up saving about 3-$400 by putting our stuff in storage, Praise the Lord!! We do truly believe that God has a plan for us during this time. We are trying to keep our heads up and focused on Him instead of all the other chaos.
Also during this time Ben has started his position as the Children's Ministry Director. He attended his first staff meeting on Tuesday and really enjoyed getting to know the staff. They have been helping him to get situated in his office, supplying him with the needed resources that he needs to begin. He is absolutely loving it so far and is excited for this upcoming Tuesday where he will start his first full week of work. This Saturday we will be driving to Cedarville University where most of our church members are at for a weekend retreat of spiritual enrichment. They have invited us to come down for the day. Ben is looking forward to connecting with people from other churches to build his network. Sunday we will be filling the gaps for the children's church teachers and jumping in and leading during the main service. So despite our house not closing, we already have plenty to keep us busy. I (Christina) will be starting work on Monday and am excited to start my training as a Family Case Manager. I will write more about that later, when I know more about what my job will be like. We will also post some pictures of the church and our surroundings as soon as we can. Until then... thanks for bearing with this long blog!!
The other challenge we were up against was that our moving company needed to drop off our stuff on Wednesday, but we didn't have the keys to our new house in order to move the stuff in. The cost to have them deliver at a later date would have been $500 so we quickly thought of a plan B to put our stuff in storage. The Lord blessed us with a company that is fabulous to work with. They are kind, flexible and extremely generous. After explaining our situation to them they told us that they had a moving truck that we could use for free when we needed to move our stuff out of storage. That was a huge relief for us and an opportunity for us to see the Lord at work on our behalf. We ended up saving about 3-$400 by putting our stuff in storage, Praise the Lord!! We do truly believe that God has a plan for us during this time. We are trying to keep our heads up and focused on Him instead of all the other chaos.
Also during this time Ben has started his position as the Children's Ministry Director. He attended his first staff meeting on Tuesday and really enjoyed getting to know the staff. They have been helping him to get situated in his office, supplying him with the needed resources that he needs to begin. He is absolutely loving it so far and is excited for this upcoming Tuesday where he will start his first full week of work. This Saturday we will be driving to Cedarville University where most of our church members are at for a weekend retreat of spiritual enrichment. They have invited us to come down for the day. Ben is looking forward to connecting with people from other churches to build his network. Sunday we will be filling the gaps for the children's church teachers and jumping in and leading during the main service. So despite our house not closing, we already have plenty to keep us busy. I (Christina) will be starting work on Monday and am excited to start my training as a Family Case Manager. I will write more about that later, when I know more about what my job will be like. We will also post some pictures of the church and our surroundings as soon as we can. Until then... thanks for bearing with this long blog!!
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