Providence

It’s hard to even start to explain the last week to you. Ben has been looking for a ministry job for months now. He has put out over 40 resumes, made countless calls, done a few interviews, and preached a few trial sermons, but nothing has worked out. We have been praying everyday that God would lead us where He wants us to go, and last week we started thinking we should try something different. Ben said that he was thinking he might really want to go to seminary to get his master’s degree. If he goes now while I’m in seminary, his tuition is half price, so we thought it might just be an ideal time for him to go. So last week, we started praying about whether we should continue seeking a ministry position or move back to Lincoln and pursue more schooling. We laid out our needs before the Lord. If we would move back to Lincoln, Ben would need a full time job that could pay our bills since I would stay home with Addy, we would need a house or apartment with three bedrooms (so we would have an office space for school) that we could afford and would let us have Daisy, and we needed the money to pay our costs of rent and deposit on the place. It seemed like a pretty tall order, and since every other door had closed on us, I figured either this would as well or God would move in a big way…and move He did. Early last week, we heard from yet another church that said they wanted someone with more experience—something hard to do when you are right out of college. Discouraged, Ben decided to call his old boss at Remington to see about getting a job there. His boss said he had just been writing up a newspaper ad for a full time position opening up and they would love to have him back whenever he wanted to start. What a relief after so much stress!! Right after that, Ben called about some houses available in the Lincoln newspaper. The very first two he called were reasonably priced and would allow a dog outside. So yesterday, we went to Lincoln so Ben could “officially” put in his application at Remington and so we could look at houses. In the end, we fell in love with a small house out in the country with three bedrooms, two garages, and plenty of space for Daisy to run. The landlords are very easy going. They said we could paint if we wanted and we could have a garden and pretty much treat the house like ours. And the big plus is that rent was VERY reasonable, about $50 more than if we moved back to our little two bedroom apartment we had before. The biggest problem we had was that they wanted us to move in by September 1st, and we didn’t’ know how to get the money for our first month’s rent and deposit. We figured that if God had provided this far, He would get us the rest of the way. We got home late last night, exhausted from our weekend, and in the mail was a check from my Grandmother for almost EXACTLY the amount we needed for our rent and deposit. She said that she had been praying for us and that God had led her to send that check….how incredible! God has blessed us so much! So now we start the packing process. We are planning to go over on the first of the month to spend a few days painting and cleaning and then finish moving in that next weekend. It will be crazy, but I am so excited to finally settle down for more than a short time. God is good!