Homeless
After spending the last two years living with Jon's dad before he passed away this summer, we had a big decision to make. Do we stay in his house for a little while until we find a house to buy? (We've been looking for a house for the last two years with no luck!) Do we put the house on the market even though we didn't have a house?
As we dealt with taking care of things after he passed away, we both felt strongly that we needed to move forward and put the house on the market. And in order to do that we had a fair amount of home projects to get done so that it would be in turn-key condition for the real estate market. We got started on projects, found a realtor, hired some handyman help, and were able to get everything done in about 6 weeks. As the time got closer to putting it on the market, we realized we had better start figuring out where we were going to live. Things were getting real!
It was then that apparently the Lord finally got a message through to us--maybe this was the time for us to serve a mission! Who better to help us figure out where to live? Once the idea occurred to us, we both felt it was the right decision and we proceeded to meet with the Bishop and prepare the necessary application paperwork.
We put the house on the market at the end of September, not knowing if it would sell quickly, if it would take a while, or if we'd have to wait until early spring for a better timeframe. Thanks to an amazing realtor (and lots of hard work), the house sold in one week! Now we were really going to be homeless! We would need to be out of the house by November 9th and we were still in the process of filling out paperwork and finishing medical appointments. Also during this time our youngest son was getting married at the end of October. Needless to say, there was a lot going on.
But we've come to rely on a phrase from Mr. Rogers: "Everything is figureoutable." And we especially relied on the Lord to help us know that everything would work out the way it's supposed to. We have sweet friends and family who have let us "crash" at their houses when we've needed to, but we needed a slightly more long-term solution since we couldn't predict when or where we'd be going on a mission.
Only a few weeks before we had to be out of the house, we got a text message from a long-time friend. When they found out our situation, they immediately offered to have us stay in their barn, which is not really a barn at all but a lovely apartment/AirBnB on their property out in the country. What a great blessing it has been to have a little place of our own as we've waited for the next step in our mission adventure, and we get to hang out with friends in such a beautiful, peaceful setting.
