Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Back again...

Wow, it has been a while since I posted on here. With Facebook these days, it's often so easy to post quick messages on there, but I miss out on the longer, thought through aspects of life & ministry when I don't write it all out. So, I'll come back here to the blog once in a while for my own processing, whether or not anyone is reading/interacting. We've moved from Carol Stream, IL, to Maryville, TN this year, in May. It has been a wonderful move for our family. God has been clearly leading & directing us each step of the way. It was a very quick turnaround in moving here, but we can look back and see God's faithfulness to us as we depended on Him. We live only a 15 minute drive from the Great Smoky Mountains, under 10 minutes from a great swimming spot along the river with a swing and all, and under 10 minutes from the convenience of town. All the while, the feel is that we're in the country, right at the foothills of the mountains, with a view! We couldn't have asked God for anything better, in fact, we didn't even ask Him for some of these things, He just provided it in His way. We moved down here for a number of reasons, but one was that the cost of living is cheaper. We have always been the kind of people who want to live simply, within our means. So in order to help provide some stability to our family in the USA, instead of renting in Chicago with no end in sight, we decided to buy a house with a monthly mortgage that was the same as our rent in Chicago. We could never have done this in Chicago as we lived in TEAM owned housing, which was temporary anyway. This has been great because we can now develop relationships in our neighborhood, let the kids play in the yard in safety, and many other blessings we are coming to learn. Even though we now are part of the "American Dream" (paying a monthly mortgage!), which is something I never much longed for or thought we'd ever do because we were living and ministering overseas as a family, it has been a blessing to be in one place for our family. If we look back at how many different places our family has actually LIVED in since August 2011 when we first moved to Brazil until now in TN, we have been in 12 different homes. This is crazy. Only God to give us strength and grace to get through these transitions as a family. Most people have no clue how much junk we've had to go through, but what we have learned and continue to learn is that God uses that "junk" to teach us, to bring us closer to Himself, if we will listen to Him. So that's what we continue doing these days. As we serve him as missionaries with TEAM still, we listen to Him and try to be led by His Spirit in all we do.