Fall 2009

On Veteran's day the boys and I got to see and go on board the USS NY. They used steel from the World Trade Center to make a part of the front of the ship. On board the ship were all kinds of tanks and other military vehicles, most of which the kids could climb in and around, pretend to drive and get their pictures taken in. There were Marines and Navy soldiers helping the kids in and out of the tanks and explaining the equipment. I felt really old seeing how young they all were! It was a fun trip. I think Daniel's favorite part was riding the subway and the bus, though!
On Daniel and Paul's last day of soccer we took the team out bowling after the game. It was a fun time to visit with some of the families. Although the connections we make with non-Christians and the exercise for the boys is great, we are glad soccer season is over! It's exhausting and takes up every weekend for almost 3 months. This fall was especially crazy because we were working on the house or holding open houses or going to look at houses every weekend. More about the house later....

On Nov. 14th the Crossroads Outreach Team held a Cards and Cocoa event. They invited the community and put posters in several high schools. We ended up having the Storefront packed the entire afternoon with mostly high school students making cards and surgical dolls for children in a children's hospital. It was standing room only. The Crossroads teens couldn't even fit in the main room so they crowded it the office making cards and dolls on the floor!

This past Sunday our family service club held a bake sale to raise money to transport Angel Tree families to the Christmas party. We raised over $150. Almost all the families in the church participated in some way, by baking or serving at the sale and making cards for the Angel Tree families and prisoners. We look forward to meeting the children that we're sponsoring on Dec.19th at the party. Our family will be sponsering a child and his father (the prisoner) for the year, sending birthday and holiday cards. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the sale. I was too busy leading it!

More on the house situation....

After our first open house we had 2 couples interested. After our second weekend of open houses we had offers from both of them. After about 3 weeks on the market we had accepted an offer. Almost 2 weeks ago we signed the contract! It happened really fast, which was what we needed. It was an answer to prayer. Thank you for all your prayers for the sale of our house! Yesterday the appraiser came and said we should having a closing date within the next week. We're expecting it to be mid-January.

Yes, our house is almost sold. Do we have another place to live? No! But we're hoping and praying for the house in the picture above. It's a new house (in progress). It's complicated but the owner has accepted our offer. We're still not sure if it's going to be a normal sale or a short sale (where the bank is "shorted" and they really make all the decisions, not the owner). We had it inspected a week ago and are waiting for the owner's lawyer to send the contract to our lawyer. Then we'll know more about the situation. It's got a lot of work to be done on the owner's apartment and some on the rental and the basement is totally unfinished. As you can see there's plywood for the garage door! But it has great potential. It has a 3 bedroom rental with a big patio. The owner's apartment is a large 2 bedroom. And the basement has the potental of having 2 small bedrooms, a bath, a laundry room and a large family area. We are hoping to finish the basement some day and be able to house 2 international students at a time. But finishing the rest of the house will probably take all of our money in the beginning. We will still have the income from the rental and at least 1 parking space. I forgot to mention that there's room for parking 3-4 cars! Which is amazing in Brooklyn! And a big backyard, which none of the other houses we've seen have (houses without parking may have nice yards, but usually houses with parking don't.)

Please pray that God will provide just the right house for our family, that will provide the needed income and that He will work out the timing. We may need to rent an apartment between the time we close on this house and close on the next one. We'll be starting to pack soon!

As we head into the Christmas season Crossroads is preparing to participate in Advent Conspiracy again. This year we'll be giving to dig a well in Nigeria.

Check out www.adventconspiracy.org and watch the 2009 Promo Video. We showed it in church this last Sunday and it's really powerful!