Next up: Moving house!

Now that we know where Jeff will be working next year, we need to organise to move house. At the moment we rent a house about a 30 min drive from the church. That would be close enough if we were just joining the congregation, but as the Pastor Jeff will need to be a lot closer. We are hoping to find a suitable house to rent either in the suburb or in one of the adjoining suburbs.

We have a few things we will be looking for in a new house: four bedrooms, or three plus study as that's what the fourth will be. The second and third bedrooms need to be big enough for twin single beds, not just one single bed. Many bedrooms in Perth seem to have room for two beds but do not really when you take into account the way cupboard doors open and where windows are etc. Also we need either a double lock up garage or a secure workshop/shed for Jeff's carpentry tools. At the moment all of his wood working stuff takes up the same amount of space as our car in the other half of our garage. We want a fenced back yard or front yard suitable for the kids to run and play in. And I must, must, must have tiles or floor boards or lino or anything other than shag-pile carpeting in the dining room! The carpeting in our dining room in this present house has been a bane of my life for the past almost three years. We also need enough wall space for all our book cases. I don't want stairs as we've had them in our last two homes and people just fall down them too much, even when it's only two steps down into a sunken lounge like in our present home. And... we'd like some other things, but really these are the most obvious and important things. I guess it would be great if we were able to have a space for the kids just to be play in, away from the main "hospitality areas" like dining and lounge, that I knew didn't have to have every single toy put away before people to visit. And I guess from that perspective of hospitality it would be great if it had space for more cars to park than just in the garage.

[Wow, just re-reading through this list makes me feel pretty worldly and materialistic.
God, please keep me to Your priorities!]

Last night we looked at a few online rental info sites and found a few properties which look like they might be suitable. One is actually pretty much over the back fence from the church and across one street. Not immediately next to the church so people just wander across without thinking, but close enough to be within easy walking distance. Here's some of what the rental site has to say it their blurb:

Immaculate partly renovated 4xbed, 1xbath, sep lnge, dining, formal dining/office, lge family, dble gge & lge workshop/shed. 2xreverse-cycle air con units, all bedrms with ceiling fans. Very roomy, lots of parking, neat bore-retic gdns. Gardening and lawnmowing included. Available mid Dec...

It sounds (and looks) ideal. As Mrs T thought as well when she went looking online on our behalf this morning. So we have sent an email off to the agent and are waiting to hear back.

There are a few other houses in the neighbouring suburbs but nothing that stands out as well-suited as this one.

We'll be praying about this over the next few days and weeks. I'm not all that worried about it because we have up to two months to move; we could even move after Jeff began work if this was absolutely necessary, but obviously this would not be ideal. When we moved to Perth we had two weeks to find a place to live in, have our rental application approved, and move in before Jeff began his Greek intensive at college. And it all got done! And we have been able to stay in this place for the whole three years of college and the rent has remained manageable all that time. I can remember God's kindness and provision to us then and be reassured that He is still watching over us in the same way today. Not that I think He's some sort of magical fairy godmother or anything like that, but I do know He will work all things out for the best for the people whom He has called by His name.