and...........................................GO!! - part 2

the reason i titled these posts and.............................................GO!! is because that is how our life feels right now. We have been waiting for God to show us where to go and what to do for what seems like a long time now. We moved here to hartford in nov. 2007. Wayne had lost his job in january of that year, sydney was born in august and just could not make it financially on my job alone. When we first moved here, we thought we would go to seminary in fall 2008, unless a ministry job came up. that was what we thought we would do. in the meanwhile, wayne got a job at a new walmart here in town (i know how some people feel about walmart, but for us it meant a job when many places in town were laying-off) and i ended up working as a supervisor at my old high school job at a local craft store. time past and nothing opened up for ministry and with the economy so low, it seemed like a bad time to pile up a load of debt from seminary (did you know churches ask you what your debt load is when they are considering hiring you). so, no schooling and no paid ministry, just work and sydney
well, we thought, we need to be content where we are and serve God wherever he has us. of course we always knew that, but now we had an opportunitiy to put it into action. Wayne stepped up and started teaching adult sunday school and i started volunteering in the church nursery. wayne loved teaching his sunday school class. he taught on the 12 disciples (using John MacArthur's 12 Ordinary Men book as his guide), the book of Acts and is currently teaching on Ephesians.
while we love being with my parents (the basement is finished off and is kind of like a mother-in-law suite with a small kitchenette and a 3/4 bath), it started feeling a bit cramped, especially when elijah was born. we started feeling a little desperate to get out. we decided to look at buying a house. we talked to our bank and a mortgage lender and surprisingly (at least to us) we actually qualified for a loan! (we don't have bad credit, but since we had not had any payments of any sort for a while [rent, car payments or school loans for example], we didnt think we would have any credit). of course the loan was small, which is fine; after all you can only afford what you can afford. but after looking online at houses, we realized that it would be difficult to find a house in the area.
we found a great realitor who showed us about 4 houses (among a dozen or so that we reviewed) over the course of a month. they all would have needed so much work and were so far away that it would not have been wise to purchase.
hartford is an expensive city to live in. the median value of a house in hartford is 25k more than the median value for the state of wisconsin. comparitively, manitowoc's median value is 58k less. that makes a big difference when looking for a house. this is one of the reasons we put in for a transfer for wayne to the manitowoc walmart. additionally, we loved living there before. it is a great town and we had a wonderful relationship with the pastor and church where we ministered after college.
anyway, wayne indicated on walmart's employee computer that he would be interested in a a few positions at walmart in manitowoc. while we liked the idea of moving to manitowoc, we really were not holding our breath for it. with christmas coming, i figured most places would only be hiring seasonal help then once the holidays were over, that was it. wayne had contacted another walmart closer to us here in hartford and found out they were not even hiring seasonal help, much less a job that would continue on and be good for buying a house. i thought, maybe we would hear something in several months from manitowoc, but no way any time soon. in the back of my mind i resigned myself to be living in the basement for a while longer.
so, when something actually opened up in manitowoc, we could not believe it and could not even respond with a yes right away because we really had not discussed it as if it would happen and what that would all mean for our family.
we are really excited about moving to manitowoc. we will miss hartford and our church family, but hope that they will bless and pray for us as we move on.