We're Moving to Michigan...

Yes, you read the title correctly! I better start at the beginning. The past few years Trevor has been unhappy with his job and trying to figure out what to do about it. He has struggled with balancing work, family time, and ministry opportunities within our church. A couple of months ago he told me he felt God was calling him to do something more ministry related with his career. He began searching the internet for opportunities that would integrate his business skills with a ministry. He came across a job at Lenawee Christian Ministries in Adrian, MI. Just reading the job description, we were amazed at how the job seemed to have been made just for Trevor. It seemed he met almost all of the specifications they were looking for in a candidate. LCM oversees a Christian school pre-K through 12th grade and The Center. The Center includes an impressive work out facility complete with racketball courts, basketball courts, an olympic sized pool with 2 waterslides and a climbing wall. It is an AMAZING facility. In addition, The Center has a small restaurant with a Starbucks, a 700 person auditorium, and 70 acres of land. The ministry focuses on trying to get back to how it used to be when the church was the center of the community. They use their auditorium to bring in speakers and singers throughout the year. During the summer they host numerous camps. From the two times we have been there we have fallen in love with the place and the people. On January 23rd, we found out that Trevor got the job as the new Executive Vice President of LCM and ever since life has been a blur.

We are both really excited about this opportunity and feel confident that this is where God is leading us. Trevor and I spent last weekend back in Adrian looking for a house. Adrian is a smaller town of about 23,000 people located in the southeast corner of Michigan. It is just 20 miles north of the Ohio border and is 36 miles northwest of Toledo, Ohio and south of Ann Arbor, MI. After a thorough search of the available houses in the area we made an offer Sunday morning and then drove back to Iowa. Monday morning (yesterday) we got the good news that our offer had been accepted. Yea!!! We are the proud owners of a nice 2-story, 4 bedroom home. It is in a really peaceful neighborhood and appears to have been well cared for. It has a newly updated kitchen and a large four-seasons room, which we will use as a recreation room. As a bonus, it has an in-ground swimming pool and hot tub, something we completely were not looking for. It will be a great house for entertaining, which is something that we both enjoy.

Trevor's last day at Rockwell is 2/12/2010 and his first day at LCM is on 2/22/2010. We plan on moving sometime between those two dates. There are still a lot of variables as to whether or not we can move directly into our new home or will need temporary housing. It all depends upon how quickly all of the paperwork can be completed and much of that is based on how quickly our current home sells. As of this morning, we have a sign in our front yard, so we are making progress. When we first told the girls that we were moving to Michigan, Kaylee realized that meant we needed to sell our house and that we would have a sign in our yard. I asked her what the sign would say and she took a moment to think about it and said "FREE". We laughed and told her it definitely would NOT say free... The girls are really excited about moving to Michigan. In their little minds they know that we will have access to the swimming pool at The Center whenever we want and that they no longer have to share a room. Kaylee is especially excited about that, as she says Kianna snores! One of the perks of the new job is that our kids can go to Lenawee Christian School for FREE, which is huge! I met Kaylee's new preschool teacher over the weekend and she was super nice. I think Kaylee will fit in really well there. Kianna will start preschool there in the fall, as they only have a 4 and 5 year old preschool class. It will be fun having some more 1-on-1 time with Kianna while Kaylee is in school and while Trace naps. Please pray with us that our house sells quickly and that we make this transition smoothly.