Yay! Praise God!

This weekend was rather fun filled and it spilled into a bit of today.

On Saturday we were able to take advantage of the Free Museum Day held by the Smithsonian and went to the Frazier International History Museum in downtown on Museum Row. It was actually very well done and a very enjoyable time! The museum focuses on weaponry with the top floor devoted armor, lances, and swords from mostly Britain in the middle ages. It was really cool (and some of them slightly gruesome...). The second floor had some really cool gun displays of all sorts of weapons in their historical context (exploration, colonies, buffalo shooting, civil war, etc.). I was reading some displays and they seemed really familiar and I remembered it's because they are the BANG! guns (Remington, Winchester, etc.) hahaha. The bottom floor hosted several dramatic reproductions throughout our visit and we sat in on a three man show focusing on  John Wilkes Boothe and his tormented life. It was very informative and extremely well done and reminds me of this really cool 6th grade historical fiction called Assassin. Another plus was, we went to the book store and I got Harry Potter 7 for only 10 bucks, yay!

On Sunday we continued our church hunting which has brought us to Baxter Avenue Baptist Church. We first heard of the church as the church that Dr. Stuart Scott (formerly from Grace Community) went to and it sounded interesting with it's focus on clear, biblical preaching coupled with ministry to the surrounding (fairly poor) community. It was tiny (50 people) but it felt full of life and community and everyone was very friendly the moment we walked in (hm...how did they know we were new? maybe it's the black hair...). We thoroughly enjoyed the worship service and the pastor was very humble and pastoral in his care for his flock. It actually kind of reminded us of CYF (we even sang Mighty to Save!). After we were invited to stay for the all church potluck luncheon where we were able to meet some more people and even a person who knows Becca from Master's College! It was a great feel and we'll definitely be back again. God has been so faithful to lead us in this church hunt!

Finally, not only may we be closer to finding a church home, we are steps away from finding a physical home!!! It has been a crazy (and very fast) experience, and God has been teaching my heart so much through the whole home-searching process. Even after my last post about houses, I was still struggling with becoming obsessed about our missed opportunity, especially after seeing some more houses and not being too impressed. However, we had narrowed our search down to two houses in the NE area of Louisville last Tuesday and were scheduled to see them again on Saturday before we made the final decision. However, on Thursday we got sent another new listing and although there were no pictures, the specs looked good and it was just down the street from the other two houses so we thought, why not just go see it too? We started seeing the first two houses and decided since we had some time to spare we should just go ahead and fill out the paperwork for the house we liked. Then we made our way to our appointment at the newer house. Wow were we surprised!!! For the price we all thought it would turn out to be a dump house with so many repairs or a really strange design. However, God had something else in mind. The layout was good and the house was clean and it seemed to be everything we were looking for, at the fraction of the price. After going through it once, then twice, then a third time with the camera we decided we were at a good but difficult crossroads. Which house to choose? Well, over the course of driving back home and weighing things out we finally decided to go with the surprisingly nice house and that day we signed the papers to start up a deal. Then Sunday and today it was going back and forth between counter offers until we came up with an acceptable

deal for both parties today! Wow!! I still can hardly believe it, but it is truly amazing how God works. A house that was not even on our radar at all and is so much cheaper than we had imagined just falls right into our laps. We are sooo thankful to God for bringing this along because we know it is His perfect plan for us. I'm so thankful that He didn't allow us to get the first house, knowing that this would come along which will allow us to save money and thus be more generous with our lives and

finances. Also, the house is pretty much move in ready, but there is room for painting and adding decorative extras (title the bathroom, install some wood flooring, sconces, lighting, etc.) which is fun because I can make it more personalized and dress it up to hopefully improve resale value (Greg says I want to make it pottery barn). What a fun project to undergo! So please praise our great God with us and continue to pray for us. We still need to go through inspection and our loan needs to make it through as well. So right now I still need to guard my heart and not think of it as my own but still continue to trust God and place my hope and contentment and joy on Him and not any sort of circumstance He may bring. Thanks all for your prayer and support! We will post more pics soon!