House moving time

We hope to be on the move, house wise. Not far - still within Lincoln! We're in discussion with some friends and neighbours who are also moving, and their house offers significant advantages over our present place in terms of ability to host student meals and Bible studies; and in having people to stay. The vendors have been very gracious in the whole process for which we're very grateful, and we pray and work towards settlement.

If you've been to our place with a full living room of 25 students crushed into the small space you'll know its....um...friendly and warm! Here's a photo of just 15 - but we have gone to 25.


We have maps in our hallway that we invite people to sign when they come to our place. Looking at it now we realise we do have quite a few coming through, so an extra bedroom to house guests would be very welcome and not tie up my study for the duration of their stay.

We've mused, prayed, done sums, and think this is the way to go, and we don't think we're being greedy in seeking to move to a bigger property, rather, we believe this to be good stewardship. In fact, we think this move would increase the work of the gospel in this place, and potentially nationwide as we consider a new graduate resourcing work that may be located from our home. Money and stewardship issues are never easy, are they? We want to be wise with resources and God-honouring in the use of all that he has enabled us to have.

So that's the move to another house, but at the same time we need to work out how to sell this one. We've put it on the market ourselves, as the sums wouldn't work if we had to pay an agent his commission - which would equate to nearly half a year's salary which is just ridiculous. So in the last couple of weeks we've been doing major gardening (sadly now the end of the tomatoes!), painting of ceilings (why is it that we too, like so many, paint just before leaving a place?!?), washing of walls, professional carpet clean, filing of books and paperwork, and general de-cluttering by storing stuff in the roof and a friend's barn. So a big thank you to Hudson & Rosemary for allowing us to store some of our bulkier stuff in their barn, and to Mark and Robyn for their trailer in getting it there! We've only been in NZ for 3 1/2 years so how come so much stuff has been accumulated? I blame TradeMe....

Here's a photo of our place (looking very fine in a great location!), taken on what seems to have been the only sunny autumnal day in the last couple of weeks:


If you, or anyone you know is interested in a two bed house in Lincoln then do let us know or look at our ad on TradeMe - we'd be very pleased to hear from you or them!