Bittersweet News

Wow... I can't believe that it has been so long since I have posted anything to our blog. A lot of exciting things have happened in the last month, most of which we have been unable to talk about... that is until now. All announcements have been made, and all information in public knowledge, so I guess the last thing to do is share the news will all you who may not know. I guess I will start from the beginning...

A couple of months ago on a random Wednesday night Ben received a phone call from a pastor in a church in his home town (Clarksville, TN) asking if he would be interested in a position that they had. We were caught off guard, flattered, but a little reluctant to move forward with anything. Ben still has a year of Seminary left, we were really happy in our position at Little Mount and the way the Lord was moving, and we were unsure about the church in Clarksville and their beliefs. We prayed about it for a couple of days and decided that we should at least meet with the pastor and find out more about the church and the position. To make a long story short, we had several meetings with the staff at the church, asked them a lot of hard questions, sought the counsel of our family and other wise Christians, and prayed A LOT and decided to move to Clarksville and accept the position (I'll have Ben tell a little bit more about the church and the position later).

This transition is so bittersweet for us... we are so excited and so sad at the same time. On one hand, we are moving back home (though we have been in KY for 3 years TN has that special place in our hearts). We are going to be close to our families and the job at the church is the type of position that we thought we wouldn't be able to get until we had been out of seminary a few years. But, on the other hand, we hate to leave our little nest in Taylorsville. We really feel that our little church is our family. We have built so many great relationships with so many wonderful, caring people. The Lord is also working in a mighty way at Little Mount. For start, we have had 9 youth come to Christ since the summer and new families have been visiting and joining. Though we know that God receives all the glory for these things and that it is not us that has caused these things to happen, it is hard to leave where the Lord is at work.

Also on the list of crazy thing we have done is the last month is buying a house. Here's a picture of our new home...

We certainly had no intentions of buying a house so soon, but the week after we looked at it we got a call from the owner (who went to kindergarten with Ben) saying that someone had put an offer on the house. We knew if we wanted it we had to move then. Let me just say that the next day was the just about the most stressful day ever. I couldn't sleep that night. I just kept thinking "Dave Ramsey would call us crazy!" The next morning I had about talked Ben into backing out and not sending in the contract. Ben spent the day on the phone with his dad and the mortgage broker and crunching numbers and we decided to take the plunge. We close on November 19... I'll post more pictures of the house then. We won't actually move until December 14th, so we'll have time do some work on the house before we move.

I guess that's all our big news, I'll do better about posting more often and not springing so much on you at once... I know it's a lot to take in.