houses and more houses....

We just wanted to update everyone on our housing opportunities for when we move back to Kansas, and ask for some prayers. Jeremy and I have really been looking for a house to rent, versus an apartment, and this past week I have been calling around on a few that I found at the Wichita Eagle online. We are mainly looking to rent in the Riverside, or College Hill area. So as I am calling around on some houses, this one in riverside comes up and I call on it. It seems like an amazing deal, with all of the features we are wanting in a house. It even has a fenced in back yard for the puppy we are going to be getting!! So as I am talking to this renter, she keeps telling me how she just loves to rent this house to young couples, because it is just such a cute nice and fixed up home. So I just continue to get more and more excited....while totally getting my hopes up. It seems like a wonderful answer to our prayers. The renter was acting like she thought this house might be gone by the time we come back to look over spring break, so I set up an appointment for our good friend Melisa to go and look at it for us and take some pictures. Once I call the lady back to confirm the time, she says, well I just want to let you know that I have a man looking at the house tomorrow for the second time, and he is really interested. So she is not sure if it will last until Melisa's appointment with her. Now all my hopes and dreams are crushed. Meanwhile, I am supposed to wait to hear back from her on that option. Jeremy and I have been praying about our living situation a lot, and last night, we prayed for a while before we went to bed, that if this is not the house for us then that we might find something even better. All while I am really trying to have a good attitude, that this house could possibly not be the right house for us (I just couldn't imagine it).

Well.....to make a long story short....today we found one even better. And it is not confirmed, and no one has gone to look at it yet, but it really seems like a God thing. Mom just happened to be driving through riverside looking for some rentals for us, and saw this one. Which has been kept up much better on the outside, than the previous house. So she gives me the number and I called on it. This very nice older man answered the phone and gave me a lot of information about it. I continued to ask him if he allowed pets, and he said, oh of course! You can have as many as you want! Ha, ha. I think one puppy for now will be good. But he said that they have a fenced in back yard, with a kennel, that we could keep the dog in overnight if we wanted. So I asked what he would charge for a pet deposit, and he said, oh well I won't charge you anything. What?!? I have never heard of someone not charging a pet deposit. So I continued to ask what kind of a lease he would require, and he said, that we could do month to month, 6 month or a year. He didn't care. He said we are not going to make you stay here, if you are un-satisfied! Which is a huge answer to prayer, because we wanted to possibly do a shorter lease, because we are planning on looking to buy (but if this house worked out, we might be there longer than we think). So by this point, I am pretty much in love with this very sweet man. Well....I said I was going to try to make this short, so much for that. He asked again for my last name, and we ended up figuring out that he goes to Asbury (where Jeremy and I go to church in Wichita), and he knows Jeremy parents really well from when they went there! And there is more....his next door neighbor for years, is my mom's uncle Bob and aunt Wilma. We just kept making all of these connections, and we talked for quite a while. So...mom and dad are going to look at the house on Sunday afternoon for us, and take some pictures. He said that once they got there, if it something we are really intersted in, that they could put down a deposit, and he would hold it for us until May (which has been a problem with some other rentals). His exact words were "with a name like Fredin, I would be glad to hold it for the two of you!". I got a good laugh out of that one. He even said that we would pick out the paint colors, and then they would paint the inside for us! So...it kind of seems like too good to be true, but I feel so blessed that God would give us two wonderful opportunities within two days. We just wanted to ask everyone to pray for us as we are trying to make this decision. And if this is the house for us, that the doors would just keep opening. Sorry, this ended up being longer than I expected!! We are coming back home a week from this Friday and we can't wait!!! We are so excited to see everyone!!