Owning a house is a strange beast

I spent most of today getting my utilities transferred into my name. I tried yesterday around 3:00 pm and most of the offices had closed by then, which I thought was stupid. But today, I transferred all the utilities into my name, except water. They said since I was a renter, I would have to pay a $200 deposit that doesn't get refunded until the water is shut off. However, if I was an owner, there is no deposit. Well, I asked the seller if we could just keep the water in their name and have me pay them. They were totally cool with that and once again, made my life easier.

However, my neighborhood is by far, the coolest neighborhood I've ever seen. ( For some reason, my spell checker is defaulting to british spelling, so fyi if some of my words have too many "u"s in them). There are a bunch of younger kids, around 4-7 years old on the street and they like to play in the street every night. Don't worry, it's a low/no traffic street and their parents come outside to watch them. Most of those parents are within 10 years of me, some probably 3 years older than me, so that's a great way to go meet the neighbors. I just see the kids outside and can go up and talk to the parents. There is also a church member from the wheelersburg right accross the street. I also found a family who likes to watch house and they invited me over to watch with them. I think that's so cool, especially since I don't have cable yet :-)

There are lots of cats and dogs on the street who come out and play with the kids. Don't worry, none are strays. One dog in particular, a 1 year old golden retreiver named cooper likes to come and say hello whenever I come outside. I like that, since I never had a dog growing up.

I still haven't started working yet. The three pastors and I met on monday and I thought it would be a meeting about work. Not at all. They were just tryign to help me get set up in my house and wanted to help me anyway they could. There's a lot of support here for me and they are making my transition almost painless. We had one youth event on sunday which was planned before I got here. We saw a group called "team xtreme" do all kinds of strongman feats, like bending a frying pan with their bare hands! All throughout, they gave a gospel presentation and had an altar call at the end. Every one of the kids in my youth group went down for the altar call. If any of you know me, you know that I'm not a fan of altar calls. I don't think you can find them in the Bible, so I talked to a few of the kids afterwards. It seemed like most of them didn't know what it meant to be saved, they only had the catch phrases that team xtreme had given them. Don't get me wrong, team xtreme is awesome for what they did, I just felt like they left the kids a little confused about what really happened. So, I talked to two guys about how to get saved and what it means to follow Jesus. I don't think I'll use any names, just to protect the group's privacy, but it look like I'll have to start from square one with this group. I think they know a lot about God, but don't KNOW Him. But that's what my job is: to tell people about Jesus. After talking with those two guys, I was reminded of how much I love telling people about Jesus. It had been such a long time, especially with Christian college. So, things are going well and I've already been telling people about Jesus, even before starting my job!

Oh, and I have the whole week to unpack before I start. I don't really need that much time, but I'll take it. I'm getting to know my neighbors and some of the youth already. I'll try to keep you posted. Pictures might not be for a long time. I'm thinking of getting a camera, but I still need to make a budget. Thanks for reading!