The Transitioning Begins

We've got some good news to report. After just a little over two weeks on the market, our house is under contract. Given the recent upturn in the market around here and the ensuing busyness, the closing process will take around a month and a half to complete. This could not fit better with our timeline. We were under the impression that the whole process between accepting and offer and closing on the house would take a month to complete, not 6 weeks. Based on that, we were under the impression that the ideal time to sell the house would be about a week and a half from now. God knew better. I'm glad that He's running the show on this. Pretty cool, eh?

Last Sunday my pastor, Jeff, was gracious to allow for me to present our vision to our local church body. It was a great encouragement to hear and feel the support from our friends in our dear church. Another friend of ours, Matt, has invited us to come up to his church to speak on July 6 in Thompson Falls, MT. That all said, we are at about 50% of what we need in financial support to be able to go in August, but the gap is steadily closing. We are able to conduct a follow up mailing last week and hope to hear from more partners in the next week.

In Ecuador, there's good progress to report as well. Our contact with the school has located an apartment near the school that will meed our family's needs just fine for a good price. We will see photos of it next week. Hopefully, we will have something to share that you can see. It's on the first floor and has a patio. Where there's a patio, there's usually grass/dirt. Where there's grass/dirt, there's going to be a garden. Here in Montana, I have to think of ways to keep moisture in the soil. In Ecuador, I will have to think of ways of keeping the moisture from saturating the soil (raised garden?) We have been able to tentatively get our hands on some furniture.

Our main tasks for the next week are to begin packing and to find a home for our Malemute, Kodah. He's been a great dog, but we can't take him with us. A dog with 9" hair + an undercoat would probably not do very well down there. He's 5 years old and likes to play with mountain lions at night if anyone is interested. He appears to be disinterested in bears and deer.