The scattered puzzle pieces are coming together, I think

We have been searching online for houses for months. Just getting an idea of each neighborhood. We are looking at what is available, the price range, the demographics, the school system, and just what we think would be a good fit for our family. As we pray and ask for God's wisdom and guidance through this process, new information seems to be added weekly. At first Ken and I set a basic budget and wrote a list of things that we feel would be helpful not only for our family but for ministry. We know that neither of us have the tools or know-how to gut and re-do a house so we were looking for a house that didn't need alot of work. Drew found one online and we all liked how it looked. Ken and Drew contacted a buyers agent and they went through it. It seemed like it would work. The next steps were to negotiate a price with the owner. That weekend a good friend from college, who is a pastor near Richmond, Indiana, got together with us and brought some options to the table that we hadn't considered. He and some men from his church would be willing to help us take a "fixer-upper" and make it liveable and help us keep our mortgage low. So, we started looking at completely different areas of the city for "handy man specials". Ken, Drew, and I went up last Saturday to go through a couple of these bank-owned houses. They definately need work, mainly because they have sat empty for so long. When we came out of one there was a car in the driveway and a couple who have been in real-estate for 20 years was also coming to look at the house. They gave us another bit of information that may help us in our search. Some communities have a point of sale inspection process that affects the amount your mortgage is required to be. The amount of money they think it will cost to bring the house up to code must be held in escrow. This is ok except we have folks who are willing to do the work for the cost of the materials. Sometimes added information is helpful and sometimes it is confusing. Please pray for us as we seek to do God's will for our lives.

From the country to Cleveland

This blog is being created to help our friends and supporters keep up to date on our progress in getting ready to move to Cleveland.