Alison and I have found a new house!
We've been planning to move house for a while now, for various reasons. When we came here last September, we took pretty much the first place we found purely because we were in such a mad rush and were busy sorting out new jobs and getting everything ready for our wedding. Since then I've taken a job on the other side of the city, and Alison will be starting teacher training in September, also on the other side of the city. We're also travelling across the city at least twice a week to go to church and it's various related meetings, which is a bit of a pain. Last, but not least, we're planning a new missionary work on the estate with the church, which will be similar to Andy Hawthorne's
Eden Project which rather hinges on us living on that estate.
We'd spent a few weeks looking for a place in the papers and stuff, but there was nothing. It's mostly a council estate, with some houses for private sale and some properties owned by housing associations, but that's about it - hardly anyone lets houses there. We can't afford a mortgage of any kind, so it looked like we were out of luck.
We went and looked at one house on Wednesday but, in technical terms, it kinda sucked. For the amount of work it needed in decorating it really wasn't worth the money. I was feeling pretty rubbish by then, as we're only about 4 weeks off the date when we're due to be out of our present house. Scary stuff. So, we prayed about it at midweek meeting that evening and on Friday our Pastor got in touch to say that the house next door to him is still available for rent. Something of a surprise as it's been vacant for months. It turns out they've been doing it up. Nice.
So, we went and had a look on Saturday and it's amazing. It's a nice big 3 bedroom semi-detached place with a garage and a huge garden and a little conservatory type thing. It's part furnished and they're in the process of refitting the kitchen. It's also going at a very reasonable price. There's little disadvantages like it having no double glazing and no shower, but if it had either of those we'd be looking at least another hundred on the rent so we can't complain. One of the best bits as far as Alison is concerned is that the landlady will let us have a pet cat, which is pretty darn cool.
So, yeah, that's pretty awesome. We'll be moving in at the beginning of August.
A very handy timely answer to prayer from the man upstairs.
