Blessings upon Blessings

It has been a while since our last update, for which I sincerely apologize. Much has transpired in our hearts, though. There have been a few new (and pleasant) changes in our relationship both externally and internally.

Our wedding plans are moving along quite nicely. We have done a good portion of the invitations so far, planned out the schedule for the rehearsal and the wedding day. We have booked and planned our honeymoon, and figured out many details.

It has been such a blessing to see God provide for each step along the way. An uncle to make the cake, a cousin photographer, a friend from work who will print our stationery, and so much more. Credit card rewards are paying for about 1/2 of our honeymoon travel costs, an aunt for our suite, a sister who is very good at coordinating large events, a brother-in-law who is advanced at piano and so much more. God has truly been providing more than we could ask or think!

Last Friday, I (Jeremiah) had my wisdom teeth pulled. God worked out the details so that Verity's parents were coming down Friday and Saturday anyways, so Verity could take care of me all day Friday and again on Saturday. We had such a blessed time together. One of the neatest parts was that we got to have her parents over for lunch on Saturday and I got to make fettuccine Alfredo (although I couldn't really eat much of it after my wisdom teeth coming out and all). It was so fun to have them over. Everyone was in good spirits and we all got along famously. It seems very much like God has been healing the relationship between me and her folks. Then we discussed who is paying for various parts of the wedding and that put everyone at ease.

A week or two ago, I was talking with a lady from one of my FedEx stops who is a loan officer and she was asking why we wanted to rent. I told her that we hadn't really considered buying to be an option, but then she started sharing some things we didn't know, like how to get a down payment from a special program, and a tax refund for buying a foreclosure. So we decided it wouldn't hurt to look into buying and if the price were right, we could get monthly payments on a house lower than the cost of rent. So we had a realtor send us a listing of houses in the area for sale and we found 3-4 that we liked. Thursday (the night before my surgery) I looked at one about 2 miles from where I now live, and Friday morning, her folks and her went to look at that one also. then on Friday after my surgery, she drove us down to the seminary to pass out invitations to our wedding reception (on August 23rd) and then to look at the other houses. We had a fabulous time looking at the various houses and because we took one wrong turn, ended up finding some leftover free items (picture frames, vases, etc.) from a garage sale. There were two houses in Crystal that we looked at, but they weren't very nice and the neighborhoods looked a little dark. We expected Crystal to be a nicer neighborhood than Brooklyn Park. However, then when we went together to look at the house in Brooklyn Park, the neighborhood was really nice. We walked around the outside of the house for a while and then two neighbors started walking our way. I thought for sure they were going to ask us to leave, but then they asked us if we were interested in buying. They were really friendly men and had seen how the house was taken care of. (In fact, they took the initiative to mow the lawn, even though the realtor was supposed to take care of that!) They told us about some of the problems in the house over the years and said that we should offer the seller $20,000 less than the list price!

We are not sure if the Lord will work out this housing situation for us or not. We will likely move into an apartment first for a little while, but if the Lord provides a house for the remainder of seminary (and probably doctoral work afterwards) we would certainly consider that to be a blessing. Thank you for your prayers up until this point and we would continue to covet them as the time progresses.