Moving Out for Keeps

You might remember, as we told you the story of God opening the door for us to move, everything happened so fast that we could hardly hold onto our hats as we ran. And that was true all the way up to the move itself. And then it was pretty much the slowest move ever.

Here's what happened, in case the story I've told in pieces and parts is still confusing to you. 

Rob and his wife (the ones we are replacing at WillowBridge) bought a house, but they weren't going to close on it until mid-July. Also in mid-July, Gateway Woods had a week of training scheduled for two house parent couples joining the main campus. Rob thought it would be helpful to us to join that training week, even though it wasn't exactly geared for what we were doing. He also thought it would be easier to train us in the day-to-day happenings of life at WillowBridge if he was still living here.

And so it was that he offered us an empty apartment upstairs in the WillowBridge building. It's an apartment that will one day be occupied by a couple of guys, but for now it's available, so we came up with a carload of stuff prior to our week of classroom training and moved into the apartment. (It was full of furniture and kitchen supplies, so we just needed our clothing whatever we wanted for daily life.) 

Rob and his family moved out a couple of weeks after we arrived, and then we spent a few days cleaning and touching up the paint in the apartment before going back to Kokomo to pick up all our stuff. It had been packed and waiting on us that whole time. We had also chosen to not bring Braeya to Grabill until our final move, because we knew during our training, we wouldn't be around much, and we didn't want to put her in a strange place, without any of her familiar belongings, and then be gone for hours on end.

SO! That's how it came to be that we left for Grabill on July 12th and then returned to Kokomo on July 28th to load up our truck! 

We arrived in Kokomo shortly before lunch time and spent the afternoon wrapping up final details. Ryan picked up our U-Haul around 5 p.m. and expertly backed it into our driveway, leaving all trees AND the mailbox in pristine condition. 

My parents came to say goodbye, so we got a picture with them...

Let the loading begin!!!

Here is the first box going on the truck! It was not a particularly heavy box, but it was huge, so it took two people to move it. This is Ryan and our friend Sean, who was part of our small group this past year!

Phoebe's people were also on our loading crew, and I actually just handed my phone over to Sheila so she could document while I marked off boxes that went onto the truck. She did a great job with pictures!

 I had numbers being shouted at me from all sides, but we didn't miss marking off any boxes as they went on the truck!

 This is David - Ryan's boss at the hospital and also Phoebe's dad.

 He's even cute when he's all sweaty from moving! I love him!

 Another of our moving helpers was Brad, who was also in our small group for a while, and is also married to Abagail - my work buddy from the church!

 Sheila put the camera down, so I captured HER in action! ;)

 Who said moving isn't a workout??

 To try to preserve things and minimize breaking anything, Ryan didn't stack the moving truck to the tippy top. We had a trailer on the side that hauled most of the furniture, so he didn't have such a game of Tetris going in the main truck.

Ryan's step-dad, Allen, loaned us his enclosed trailer, and Ryan's friend Shawn (of ski trip fame) brought his truck to haul it. 

 It held all the furniture so nicely!

 I missed that couch so much while we were in training.

 We loaded all our porch furniture in the back of Shawn's truck.

 And inside of three hours, loading was a wrap! This was our stellar crew - minus Sheila, who had gone home to feed Phoebe.

I could write a thank you note to these guys every day for the next month and still never fully convey my gratitude for all their hard work in getting us loaded so quickly and efficiently. It was a hot night, and all this delayed their dinner significantly (though we did feed them!) and we so so so appreciated their generosity of time. 

A full two hours after they left and we worked on cleaning up the house, I found this still sitting in the kitchen.

WE FORGOT TO LOAD THE COFFEE BAR!! 

(If you're wondering how this happened...we sold our little farmhouse table to the new homeowners, and they had stacked a bunch of their own boxes on and around it, so the coffee bar sort of blended into the background and we didn't see it sitting there.) 

Ryan said we would find a place for it...in the morning. For the moment, we were tired and done!

We slept on the floor - one last night in our Kokomo house - and then got up super early on Wednesday to prepare to leave!

 One last note on the chalkboard...

 And one last picture with Shafferland 2.0.

And then...it was time to caravan north!

The Shafferland Shuffle...Official Move Edition!!

A very happy NINETY-TWO MONTHS to Ryan today! It's our first monthiversary in Grabill! :)

It has been a full, full week, and we are just grateful to be fully here IN our new home this week! Here's a peek at our move-filled week.

* Last Sunday morning we visited our friends' church in Decatur. I told you last Monday the really cool God-moment story that came out of this visit, but it was a great day! Their church had an outdoor baptism service, and we really enjoyed being part of it. Our friends Jon and Julie invited us over to their house for lunch after and we had a great time there! That evening we participated in a game night with our tenants, and I lost with great finesse. Apparently I'm no better at games in Grabill than I was in Kokomo.

* Monday was our last day before our move, so we spent a lot of the day doing final cleaning and prep on our new apartment. I took all my "before" pictures (yay!) and we tried to make sure everything was completely ready for our move! That night we had a meeting with our department at Gateway Woods - and some potential mentors. We learned a lot in the meeting, and that was helpful! (And there were cookies which I managed to not consume all by myself!)

* We drove back to Kokomo Tuesday morning and reunited for good with Braeya. She was super happy to see us! We picked up our moving truck and had a great crew of friends spend the evening with us, helping us load it. We got it all loaded in three hours! I was excited about that! And about two hours after they left, we discovered we'd forgotten a piece of furniture - and it was our coffee bar, of all things! Can't leave that behind!

* Wednesday morning, we got up super early to get all the last minute stuff done, and then my friend Amber stopped by with Starbucks for us. We gave Braeya her calming meds and took our last pictures with our Kokomo house. Then it was time to get in the vehicle caravan and head to Grabill to become official residents!! We had a fantastic crew waiting on us when we arrived, and they got us unloaded in an hour and a half flat! Jon and Julie were part of that crew, and they stayed and helped us with some initial settling in.

* Though we were (and still are) far from settled, we were back to work on Thursday. Braeya checked out the new office while I did some work, and while I did a store-run with one of our tenants, Ryan cleaned out the WillowBridge van. It looked brand new when he was all done! Our new co-workers, Tim and Justine, brought us an amazing pie as a housewarming gift - and they got to meet Braeya while they were over.

* Friday morning, Ryan helped one of our tenants fix his bike, and I did another store run with another of them. We took a little time out to put together our new bed, and then Friday night was the virtual auction for Gateway Woods. Everyone kept telling us they were so sad we didn't get to experience the huge, real-life auction that takes place every year, but they had to go online this year because of life in 2020. We had a viewing party with our tenants, and everyone brought food to share!

* Yesterday was a dreary, rainy day here, which made me glad it wasn't auction day! Woulda been kind of soggy! It was our first day to be fully in our role as the lead couple at WillowBridge, so we spent the day with Tim and Justine, figuring out a plan for the immediate future in balancing all our responsibilities. We also worked on unpacking our clothes into our new closet space! Ryan took me for a Culver's date for dinner - and that gave us the fuel we needed to dig in and work hard on the unpacking project some more. We didn't quit working until after 11 p.m. but we felt so much better about our apartment at the end of the day!

The Saturday Six

One.

Know what I've been missing this week? MY CLOTHES!!! What?? Well, I have a suitcase of some of them hanging out in our slowly-emptying temporary apartment upstairs. I have a wad of them in the laundry basket, but I don't want to do laundry until I have a place to put away clean clothes. I have a giant box filled with some that arrived in our move, but we haven't gotten to the master bedroom yet (today!!!) so they're still in the box. But one of these days, I'll find those clothes again, and WHEN I DO!!...I can start dreaming about how to mix and match some of the same pieces for fall and winter like I have for summer. Here are some ideas!

Two.

My sister sent me this link to a B&B in Wisconsin, where you can stay in a vintage camper. It's adorable, but I also loved scrolling through the photo gallery of the farm itself. The smiling pig - eeeeek! I remember going to visit some friends on their little farm ten years ago now; they are indeed wonderful places to go to learn and recharge the soul!

Three.

It's August 1, which can only mean one thing: we have a new video from our 1 second clips of July. Here you go!

Four. 

Here's a funny story for you: our boss's daughter was playing in our (very messy) apartment this week while her mom was in a meeting. She found my stash of toys and asked if I had them because I have grandchildren. That is a SOLID NO on the grandchildren. So then she asked why in the world I have toys if I don't have grandchildren, and I told her it was for our nieces and nephews. So she asked if she could be my niece. Splendid! That's a solid YES! Anyway. She had a blast playing with blocks and the stackable ice cream scoop - and I realized I might need to add a few toys to that corner. Though this idea may not be age appropriate for her, it is really cute AND easy if you have little ones at home or coming to visit. Pretend cotton ball ice cream with pom pom toppings!

Five.

A giant chocolate chip cookie/ice cream sandwich? OKAY!!!!!!! I have a feeling in my heart that if I made this, something would go terribly wrong somewhere, but I also SO want to try!!!

Six.

It's August 1, which means it is time for a new reading list for those of you reading through the gospels this year! Alas, our printer is not yet hooked up, so here's the first seven days' worth of reading and I'll post the whole month's list next week!

*August 1 - Luke 6:17-26
*August 2 - Luke 6:27-36
*August 3 - Luke 6:37-42
*August 4 - Luke 6:42-45
*August 5 - Luke 6:46-49
*August 6 - Luke 7:1-10
*August 7 - Luke 7:11-17

What I Learned in July

1. A soft abdomen is actually a good thing.

In addition to all the background checks and tests and fingerprinting and such that we had to do for our new job, we also had to get physicals! So the week before we left for training, we went to our doctor for a regular physical, and this will just crack you UP. Ryan had his first and was done and out running errands, and I was still at the office having mine done. The doctor was talking to me about this and that, and then he scooted over and started poking my belly. As you might imagine, having my belly fat jiggled is not super high on my list of enjoyable ways to spend a Thursday morning, so I just sort of tried to ignore it and not wonder if he thought I was related to the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

After I left the office and read through the paper he had filled out for work, I saw a line that said "Abdomen." Next to it, he had written, "Soft." I bristled and said out loud (to Braeya) "Well it's TRUE, but we don't TALK about it, and we CERTAINLY don't write it down." (She walked away. Not interested.) Ryan's paper happened to be on the kitchen counter, so I grabbed it to see what his abdomen line said. I was anticipating nice and firm or delightful six pack, but you know what? IT ALSO SAID SOFT!!!!

When he got home, he explained to me that in medical speak, a soft abdomen is a good thing. It's not a judgment against my spotty workouts as of late. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

2. Saying goodbye takes more time than you might think. 

I knew it would take a while. I even told Ryan as we accepted the new job that we should anticipate a rush of people wanting to get together one last time as the time to leave drew near. And it happened! In the last two weeks, I think we had someone to meet with almost every single day. And we had to say no to some because didn't have more days left. It's a beautiful thing, though, to feel that loved. We were so grateful.

3. I know less than I even know I know. 
I stumbled upon this list this month, and I only knew ONE of the things on there. ONE!!!!!!! How many do you know?

4. Professional croquet is an actual thing. 
Our first weekend in Grabill, the director of Gateway Woods and his wife invited us over for dinner. We loved our evening at their home and thoroughly enjoyed talking with them! One of the things we learned in one of the stories he told, is that professional croquet is an actual thing. He said the little mallets and wire domes and balls that we think of when we think of croquet are just for regular games. But there are fancy sets that look a bit different and cost lots of money - and professional teams with uniforms and everything. Did you know this? I did not! But I looked it up when I got home - and there's an association and everything!

5. There are mold-sniffing dogs. 
Several weeks ago, I stumbled upon the show Hotel Impossible. Have you ever seen it? It's this guy who travels (traveled? Maybe the show isn't still current) around visiting hotels and resorts that were in financial distress. He would assess their problem areas and help them try to get back on their feet before they had to close. Earlier this month, we saw an episode that had the worst hotel I'd seen yet. Among its many problems, it had bed bugs, serious mold issues and KILLER BEES!!! The guy from the show ended up walking away because the owner wouldn't work with him and he said he couldn't stay and try to help if she wasn't willing to meet him halfway. But anyway, as they tried to figure out how bad the mold issue was, they brought in mold-sniffing dogs. They worked kind of like a drug sniffing dog in an airport, for example. They would walk down the hall and if they found mold, they would sit beside it. It was fascinating. Who knew?

6. Minivans are not as intimidating to drive when you're used to driving a crossover. 

WillowBridge has a minivan that we use when we're transporting our tenants or doing other work-related tasks. I was nervous to drive it the first time, because I remember back in my high school and college days, driving my parents' minivan was always quite an experience. But back then, I was driving a very compact car, so a minivan was really different! But we drive a crossover, and when I got behind the wheel of the minivan, I discovered it's not quite as intimidating as it used to be! Of course, I'm still nervous to be driving a vehicle that doesn't belong to me, but it's still an improvement.

7. A dragged-out move is harder than I thought.

It took us three weeks to pack our house to move, and then it took us another two and a half weeks to actually move. Living in a temporary apartment, out of a select grouping of boxes and suitcases, turned out to be more challenging than I thought it would be. I've always known I thrive on nesting and homemaking, but this really solidified it for me! It's a blessing to finally be able to be fully in one place - even if we still have some settling to do!

I had exactly three weeks from the time I packed our first box until the time we left for training. Packing was my full time job! And then from the time we left for training until we actually moved our things - almost another three weeks! Two and a half, to be fair. It was much harder than I expected to handle that meantime. We did a pretty good job of guessing the things we would actually need in that middle time, and only a few times did I really wish for something that was in a box two hours away. But I did have to really pray often about the safety of our home before we got back to it to pick up our things. It was a fabulous exercise in trust, but sometimes I didn't trust as well as I wanted to. It was the best kind of day when we were reunited with the pieces of our home and I got to start nesting and making our home.

***

So as you can see, it was a month FULL of learning - and that doesn't even tap into all the things we learned in training for our new job!

Meanwhile, here's a peek at how I did with accomplishing my July goals!

1.  Finish packing the house for our move.

I did it! (Had to! We moved!) It was, in some ways, the strangest move ever, but I was really thankful for the time I was able to spend packing intentionally, making decisions about what to keep and what to part with (knowing I might make even more parting decisions upon arrival). My little moving binder and I were VERY HAPPY!!

2. Organize for our second garage sale.

Done! Both our sales went very well, actually, and I was thankful for the amount of things we were able to sell. We had less than a carload of leftovers at the end of the sale. I was also really excited (at both sales) to hear people say they appreciated the organization of the sales. I wanted it to be a clean and good space for people to shop, and it seemed to work!

3. Say goodbye well.

I'm sure there's always room for improvement and there are probably several ways I could have done this differently, but I felt like we were able to see a lot of people before we left, and we were able to have great conversations about the work we were headed out to do! I was so thankful I had started packing early so we had the time to carve out for these goodbyes!

4. Become attentive, absorbing students.

I feel like we learned a lot during the last couple of weeks, and I've been encouraged at the amount of information I remember without peeking at notes. We still have a lot to learn - both about concepts and about specific tasks, so this one should probably carry on into my goals for several more months!

5. Make our move as easy as we can on our Braeya-girl.

We did our best, and I have to say that while it wasn't perfect, it went far better than our last move! (And that was a good thing because it was a long drive and I was on my own for it.) She also rebounded quickly!

6. Begin settling into our new home - and make it home. 

We'll be doing this for a while, clearly, but the very first day we moved in, my friend Julie and I unpacked the entire guest room (which is where we are temporarily staying while we get our new bed assembled in our master bedroom) and got it all set up AND partially decorated. Ryan got the couch assembled and I even made this cute little corner in the kitchen - just because cute things make me feel at home. So even though there's tons of work to do, we're getting there! And it does totally feel like home. That is true. 

Dreams and Goals for August 2020

How is it time for August goals already? July was both the longest and shortest month on record in Shafferland, I think! I feel like it flew, but at the same time, the 4th of July was about 100 years ago. (Is that just because of our busyness or do some of you think it was 100 years ago too?)

I'm making a few goals here for the merry, merry month of August!

1. Unpack and settle in.
We are now officially, totally, and completely in our new place, but there is still much work to be done before we can be accused of being settled in. We know that the bulk of August will be about that. Much of our free time will be spent settling, and I want to do it thoroughly and completely. I'm excited to envision the pieces that make up our home in their new space of a home.

2. Find a bit of rhythm with the job.
Though our training is far from done and will continue for a while, we have completed our concentrated training days and have officially reported for duty. We have to figure out our rhythm in the house, both with our tenants and with our co-workers. It will take some time, we know, but we'll figure it out. Like I've said a few times on the blog already, I know that life in this role won't always (ever?) be structured and predictable, but we are looking forward to at least making some plans!

3. Figure out our boundaries.
We've been told that it's very easy to just work all the time and never take time for ourselves. It's the peril of working in the same environment where you live. We've also been heavily encouraged to NOT let that happen - and to recognize when it begins so we can fix it. We know we won't do it perfectly at first, but this is really important, so I'm making it a goal for the month.

4. Get our mask game in order.
Indiana recently mandated mask usage in all public places, and we've discovered we need to change our mask game because of it. We don't have too many of them, and we've already had to drive back home from stores because one or the other of us didn't happen to have one on our person like we thought we did. My plan is to purchase more so we always have some in our vehicle (in case I happen to be without my purse, which is where we currently stash them all...) and always have some in our apartment and our work office and Ryan's truck and...you get the idea. We're learning already that living and working in the same place means we don't always have the same supplies with us that we used to when we were always moving from place to place. (Living in a small town where we walk many places also complicates our former mask plan.)

5. Meal plan! Cook!
It's been nearly impossible, over the last half a month, to have a consistent cooking plan. We've been on the go so much, and we've had a lot of meals shared with others. We've also been separated from most of our main cooking tools, but now that they are back, I'm so looking forward to getting back to cooking and planning. (It's part of nesting for me.)

6. Work on some scrapbooks.
Believe it or not, I did keep up with scrapbooking while we were mid-move, but I am still behind. It'll be a good creative outlet for me, too, so I'm looking forward to resuming it! We've captured quite a few memories over the last few weeks, particularly!

Peeking at Packing

I wanted to at least have one post about packing - for personal posterity more than anything else, probably.

Our move to Kokomo was my first time to properly move anywhere in my life. (When I moved out of my parents' house after college, I didn't really have much to my name, so I didn't feel like it counted as a true move.)

Four years ago, I spent a good month packing a little at a time, and then the whole move went wonky when we ended up bringing the stuff over early on an unplanned day, and it wasn't all entirely packed, and we moved the garage on a different day, so although it went well (meaning we got everything moved), it wasn't the smoothest move ever in life. And I wanted this time to be different.

And it was.

The first key, I think, was having less stuff. Even though I had done a LOT of purging before we left Marion for Kokomo, we still had more stuff than we have now. I labeled more boxes then - and didn't even get to make labels for all the boxes we moved. We downsized quite a bit more this time and I have a feeling we'll be purging a few more things as we settle in.

Fun fact about this move: we saw our new apartment on day of our interview, but because we didn't know if we would get the job, it was really more like taking a walk through someone else's home than looking at our own potential home. We didn't measure anything, we didn't take pictures of anything, and there were some rooms (like their kids' bedrooms and the laundry room) that we didn't even really see more than a quick peek). So when we got the job, we had no idea how many square feet of living space we would have or the dimensions of the rooms - nothing. Rob did send us a printed layout of the apartment, but even it was a bit different than how it actually looks, so it wasn't fully accurate. Therefore, as we packed to move, there were some things we weren't sure we'd have room for, so we just packed them and decided to figure it out on this end. We didn't get to walk into the apartment with a measuring tape until four days before we moved our things.

When we moved from Marion to Kokomo, I bought this planner from Etsy, and I loved the way it helped me organize the move. I had master lists of all the boxes and what was packed in each one. I had printed labels for packed boxes and could make copies of those labels for my moving binder too. It was really, really helpful. In fact, I have continued to use it these last four years to find things in storage!

So when we prepped for this move, I pulled it back out of my digital archives and started printing new labels!

I started packing in the rooms I felt like we could safely live without the most. The guest room, linen closet, and guest bath were the first to make their way into boxes, followed by my beloved home office. (I did keep out a few of the things I thought we would continue using, like pens and tape and sticky notes and such.)

The week I started packing was also my last week to work at the church, so I could only pack in the evenings. The second week, Ryan was still working, but I wasn't. I mostly packed during the day that week and then we had a lot of goodbye meetings and dinners in the evenings after Ryan got home.

The final week of packing, we were both off work and spent much of each day (and some evenings, too) finishing the job.

Though I did the bulk of the organizing and packing, I was so thankful for all the help Ryan gave. He found all our boxes for us, he carried the heavy stuff out to the garage after I packed it, and on that last week when we were both off work, he jumped right in and helped pack the boxes while I labeled and prepared them. Teamwork for the win!

Quick side note: even though I try to be fairly open and transparent about our life when I write on the blog, I am aware that it is a public forum and therefore there are some things I choose not to blog about ever (not hiding anything, just choosing to keep some parts of life reserved for us) and some things that I choose to blog about on a delay for privacy and/or safety reasons.

This move has been a tricky one for me to blog about freely because we were unable to actually move to Grabill when we began our training. Rob and his family were still living in the apartment that would become ours and it just worked out for them to stay in it a bit beyond our training arrival. Because of that, our stuff was waiting on us in Kokomo, and we were living in temporary housing for the first 2 1/2 weeks. I didn't really want to announce that on the blog - but we're all reunited with our things and our girl now, so I'll be catching up here over the next few days.

We are thankful that the new owners of Shafferland 2.0 went several extra miles (literally and figuratively) to house-sit for us in that transition period. They spent time at our/their house every day, caring for Braeya, making sure the house was okay, and taking care of our plants! It helped ease my mind so much to know they were there watching over everything. Braeya LOVES them, and we could tell when we came back for our mid-move visit that she had been well-loved and well-cared-for.

And now I'm excited to UNpack all the things and assemble a new home for us!!

To the New Owners of Shafferland 2.0

To Our Friends and New Homeowners...

It's been just over four years since Ryan and I signed the papers to buy Shafferland 2.0. Even though it was the second home we lived in, it was the first time we'd chosen and purchased a home together, and we were so excited for all it offered us. We loved the layout, the central air (first time in LIFE for me to have that), the attached garage, and the location. We couldn't imagine anything more perfect for us, and it lived up to everything it promised.

Though it was move-in-ready when they handed us the keys, we never stopped working to make it more and more our own. We did projects that were so much work - but also so much fun! With every room makeover, we felt like it was a little bit more ours, and we loved it.

We had no idea that the entire time, God had a dual purpose running for that house. It was ours, yes, and He let us enjoy it, love it, mold and shape it. He let us make all the memories there that I've been writing about for the last couple of weeks. But He also knew what we didn't that entire time: He had a new assignment for us waiting in the wings, and prepping this house wasn't just about us. It was about you, too.

A couple of years ago you moved to town, and I still remember the Sunday they showed the video at church, introducing you as part of the pastoral staff. I remember seeing you all in person for the first time and thinking what a nice family you were. I remember hearing about how you were on the hunt for a house, but it was hard to find something that worked for your family.

And then I joined the church staff a few months ago and I really got to know you. I remember on my very first day, being included in the office lunch to celebrate your birthday, Pastor Shane, and your whole family was there, and I was so impressed with your kids and how you're raising them. I remember enjoying conversations with you in the office and hearing about your quest to find a house and how hard it was to even get in to see them because of how insanely hot the market had become in Kokomo.

God began slowly revealing the new plan for us, and I remember so vividly that night we "happened" to see you as you drove out of the neighborhood after looking at a house down the road. I remember how you joked that of all the houses in Kokomo, you knew which one would NOT be hitting the market - and it was ours, because of all the work we had just put into it during quarantine.

That was the moment I knew that if God opened the door He had already cracked (though you didn't know about the crack), this house was supposed to be yours. It made me so excited to think about it. It's always a joy to know you're a part of the answer to someone's prayers.

I remember the day Ryan called to see if you wanted to come over and see the house before we listed it. I remember the day you came to see it - all of you tumbling out of the van trying not to be too emotionally invested. I remember how you ate cookie bars and drank coffee and ambled around the house, envisioning whether or not it would work.

I remember when you came back with tape measures and notebooks the next night. And then I remember the day after that at lunch when you casually stopped beside me in the church kitchen to say you wanted the house - and then you called Ryan to make an official offer that night.

Though that part of the process was smooth, seamless, and clearly orchestrated by God, we did have our share of headaches about the buying process, didn't we? Appraisers who refused to come. Appraisers who backed out after saying they would come. The appraiser who showed up but left news we hadn't expected.

And still in all that, God, put a peace over our hearts that appraisal reports are just earthly details that don't matter for the Kingdom. We didn't hesitate in knowing that you were the ones for this house. Ryan and I knew that separately before we even talked together, and our faith was boosted by how God put us on the same page without any hesitation.

You told us you would love the house as we had loved it, and we know you will. We aren't even a little bit worried about that. We feel that lately, we've just been stewarding the house until it could become yours, and it has been our joy.

We are so glad this is going to be your place. It's a bonus joy to get to place our beloved home in the hands of friends. We are so glad it will continue to be a home that honors God, holds memories, and is a hub of ministry.

We've been working on our own new place the last couple of days, and we are so excited to settle in fully and make it into Shafferland 3.0. I think that's a bit easier to do when we know the place we're leaving is going into such good hands.

We know that we were part of the answer to your prayers, but you are part of the answer to ours, and we are so grateful. Thank you for all you've done to make this transition sweet and easy for us. Enjoy your new home. We sure love all of you and are so happy God picked you.