Moving to the Suburbs

Just a few weeks ago, at the end of August, we decided to move from our apartment downtown. Although we loved the location, we were caught in a bit of a chasm. Not being single interns (who all live in shared housing) and not being a family with children, there is no one here in the mission in our age group or of a ‘young married’ status. We often found that the ‘intern’ group believed we were included in the ‘family’ group and the ‘family’ group thought we were included in the ‘intern’ group. So as we were awkwardly straddling both groups, we decided it would be good to make a strategic move. After thought and prayer, we decided it would be a wise decision to move to “Golf”, where all of the mission’s missionary families live. Here we will be able to build relationships with those who are older and much wiser than ourselves, hopefully glean some parenting skills we admire, and stay more connected to what’s going on in the mission as a whole. We are enjoying serving the families by babysitting the kids and letting the parents take date-nights and have had a blast doing so. We’ve moved from the busy city-center to the quiet suburbs. We now live on the corner of a pretty little park and get to enjoy lush green every day. (Something we never saw when living downtown!) The children all get together in the park every afternoon to play. We are in the second story of a house with lots of interesting character and we feel very safe in our neighborhood. With the move we acquired a terrace with some fun but struggling plants we are currently trying to revive, a television, a dryer, hot water in the kitchen, and hot showers! We are loving it! We were also able to hand our old apartment over to the intern girls who all teach English at the language institute which is just around the corner. The 6 girls were living with a Peruvian family (some for over a year), sharing the family's living space, and were eager to find a place of their own. They were very excited to have closets, their own kitchen and living room, etc. We are so glad that it worked out well for everyone!