When God Moves He MOVES!

I haven't blogged in along time, thought about it but never did.  But God's working in our lives this past week just couldn't be kept quite. 

About 6 weeks ago I just had a burden to pray for a new house, it was weird. I love our current house it is in a great location it is more than big enough. Joey was not aware that I had been praying this.

Part 1:  That God would provide a home.  I decided to pray specifically about what I wanted in a home since I was pretty sure this was just a far-fetched idea.

                1) in town but felt like the country 

                2) plenty built in of character  

                3) needed some work so we could make it our own 

                4) It would be cheap

                5) I wouldn't look for it, if it was really his will it would just happen.

Part 2: God would provide someone to buy or rent our current home for what we would need to get out of it.

Last week started like any other week, Sunday we went to church, Monday  Joey went to work, Bryce and I chilled and Tuesday was a little different Joey worked in DC. But that was still pretty normal, 90% of the time Joey works from home or rather coffee shops and McDonald's but the other 10% of the time he travels between Boston, New York, and DC. 

Tuesday:

I digress so back to the story, on his way home from DC Joey texts "Let's go look at this house".  Now for a while we have been looking at houses up for auction to purchase as a rental, something cheap enough we could pay cash. My response was " if you think it's the right place and its less than 35K I trust your judgment."  I figured it was over.

Joey arrived home and asked again about seeing a home, my response was the same.  Joey replied, "I really want you to see it" Again I responded I trust you.  His response  "I saw this place last night and couldn't sleep so around 2am I drove out to look at it. I really want you to look at it." 

Ok I figured what does it hurt. So we drove up and walked around the house, WOW. But Joey's self employed, I'm unemployed and we already have a house (mortgage). My thought was I love it but there is just no way we'd be able to get a loan.  As we left Joey said "this is like the man who found a treasure in a field and sold everything he had".  So we prayed.

Wednesday:

Joey called the Realtor and set up a walk through for Wednesday.  We meet at the house at 11:30 am and the Realtor sure didn't try to sell the house, she made sure we knew every possible thing wrong with the house, and we would have to make some improvement (roof, windows, H-Vac).  Plus the house only had one bedroom, but the 2nd floor contained a 32x18 foot room that would need to be split into bedrooms.  We left with mixed feelings, things could get expensive quick.  So we prayed and prayed some more.  The house had been inspected in June and it included estimates for many of the repairs.   It turns out that with the exception of one issue everything else could wait a few years.  We prayed some more.

Thursday:

We decided that it wouldn't hurt to go to the bank and see if there was any possibility we would qualify for a loan.  After about 15 minutes the bank had given us pre-approval for the list price of the home (146k).

We prayed some more and contacted the Realtor that evening to make an offer, now we figured they would be willing to settle between 132K and 136K so we offered well below that in hopes that a counter would be somewhere in that range.  So at 9pm that night we made an offer on 525 Atkins Dr. (link to photos)

Friday:

Around 1pm just over 48 hrs after we first saw the house, we got a call that our offer was accepted. No counter just accepted.  The As-Is assessed value is 220K and we purchased it for nearly 100K less than that.

Remember my prayer,  part one had been more than answered.

Still don't know what we are going to do with our current house, but I'm not worried about it God is the God of the impossible.

Sweetheart Banquet

Last weekend Joey and I had the privilege of hosting a sweetheart banquet for our church.  The planning was pretty intense.  Collectively Joey and I put in about 60hrs of work, but it was well worth it.  Thank goodness for our Sunday school class who co-hosted and helped by cutting tons of paper for our center pieces, making cupcakes so we could have some delicious deserts and helping set up.

To the left are the centerpieces we made. They are paper roses handmade in various shades of pink, cream and yellow hot glued to a bowl with the center cut out and put around a vase. 

Our class decided to make cupcakes instead of the traditional frozen pies and cake that the hall usually provided for its dinners. Each lady made one type.  Since I'm not much of a baker I was very proud of my Raspberry filled lemon cupcakes.

Above are the tickets Joey made, so cute!

In order to make the eveing more enjoyable we asked some of the teens to help by refilling drinks and cleaning up plates.  Some of the teens are going on a missions trip this summer and this served as a way for them to raise some money, they also provided childcare at the church to raise money.

As people arrived there was a photo booth, a game to determine which table went first and a game to get people to mingle.  Each person had the names of a famous couple on their back and had to walk around asking questions to determine who it was.



Cuteness at the Photo Booth



Playing the Famous couple game




After dinner we played a few games.  First, four couples participated in the shoe game where they sat back to back and raised either their's or their spouse's shoe to answer questions like, "who spends more time in front of the mirror" or "who is the better driver."  It was hilarious to see the hesitation as they wanted to agree with their spouse but could not see what the other was doing.   Then we had the ladies feed their blindfolded husbands a doughnut that was tied to a stick.

Doughnut on a string, the guy who won is a cop... SURPRISE

Last we played the Newlywed game…. This was especially funny as our pastor and his wife were playing this round and a daughter and son-in-law were playing along with her parents.  Especially the question “Men, what type of cereal did your in-laws compare you to when they first met you?   Just Right, Oatmeal Squares, Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, or Fruit Loops.



The Newlywed Game

After all that fun we needed something to transition us to “serious.”  Joey led the group in worship, singing songs about Christ’s love for the church and talking about the impossibility to have true love without a personal relationship with Christ.  Giving us Christ’s example as laid out in Philippians 2:1-11. Then Dr. Demeritt our Sunday school teacher brought a short message on the importance of commitment in marriage and gave three ways to show commitment.   The evening ended with Joey singing “Love is not a fight” by Warren Barfield with a slide show of all the photos from the evening

Shenk Farms

This fall I had the privalage of taking some kids to Shenk Farms. The day I announced the trip the class squelled with delight (literally) Ms. Katrinka was so nice that she make a picnic for the whole class.  So here is a short recount of our fun day!

The day started with a sceinic trip through the Shenandoah Valley to arive at the farm where we were greated by Mr. Shenk, owner of Shenk Farms.  While he and I talked the kids enjoyed some time playing in the farm's play area and some photo opps with the cutouts.

Soon the kids migraged to the animals, some chickens, goats and a cow! 

Mr. Shenk explained the differences between the animals, how they live and what they eat.

Mr. Shenk even let us feed the goats some corn out of our hands, but if you wern't carful the goats may have attemped to eat your cell phone!

Some weren't as interested in the animals and went back to playing and taking photos with the cutouts.

I belive these are the cutest farm animals I have ever seen!  Can any one say MOOO!

Next we entered the Maze and enjoyed a farm fact worksheet that was answered by finding the clues hidden in the maze.

The kids broke into four groups with an adult in each one, but occasionally we caught up with each other.

It was a bit chilly but the energy amoung the kids as they looked for the clues and completed the maze kept us warm, or maybe it was the fact that they wanted to "run" the whole time.

The first group to find all the clues and make it through the maze.

After everyone completed the maze Mr. Shenk of Shenk Farms took us on a senic wagon ride around the farm.

We saw the beautiful Mountains with all the fall foliage!

We all had lots of fun!  For more information about the farm visit http://www.shenkfarms.com/ , this is the last weekend they are open

Sprout 8: Photo Project

Lydia’s senior pictures:

This summer my sister asked if I would take her senior pictures for her.  This was not because I am an excellent photographer but for two reasons.

1.      She thought most of her friends photo’s looked the same and were taken in the same three locations

2.     She is awesome and even at 17 she is frugal, why spend money when you don’t have to!

So two weeks ago she came to visit with a friend and we had some fun around town.  There were tons of amazing photos; of course my sister is beautiful, although not all were “senior picture” in nature. These are a few of my favorite.

I also took some photo’s of Lydia’s friend any my other sister, maybe I’ll post some of them later.