new house!

On Friday, we finally closed on our new house!

The closing was definitely difficult--especially for the family who was leaving the house, as they were embroiled in conflict. I'm grateful we were able to extend grace to them, and in the end, Jason was able on Friday to help them finish moving out and cleaning out. We were glad to be able to build this bridge between our family and theirs in what was an otherwise painful time for them.

Yesterday we spent the day with friends at the new house on Henry Avenue. Many, many thanks to Glenn and Lisa for driving the hour just to help us out. Their engineering skills were put to good use as they helped us to conceive and construct the frame for a closet in our bedroom, which would otherwise have been closet-less. And others--thanks to Val, Sus, and Kim--came over to paint, and we were able to paint the ceilings and walls of both the living and dining rooms. I couldn't believe it. So much done in just one day. And now I don't have to look at sparkles on the ceilings--and walls. Yes, the walls. Thanks, guys.

I'm especially grateful for the time of prayer we were able to share with our friends last night before leaving Henry Ave. It's good--and needed--to take the time to thank God for all He's done. We've sold our house to good friends, and that has been a lovely gift of friendship in our lives. We've bought a new house next door to some amazing neighbors (we discovered in the last two days) who have many dreams for revitalizing the neighborhood. We're realizing our dream of community living this year. We're moving in well before the start of school, as we had hoped. So much good. And we are grateful to God for all He has done on our behalf.

Today we're taking a "sabbath." We had house church this morning as we continue our discussion of the book of Matthew and talk about the ways in which Jesus is the King we're not expecting Him to be. Soon we're off to Nahant's dog beach with Kobe, and then we'll spend a quiet day here at home (er, at our not-home, since it no longer belongs to us). Tomorrow Jason will be back at work in our new house (adding walls to our bedroom closet) while the boys begin a week of half-day basketball camp, and I'm back to class with just 3 days left of my summer courses remaining.

Thanks to all for your continued prayers for us. And your offers of help in the coming days. We are grateful for all the painting, cleaning, and construction help we are receiving! (And we've decided to hire professional movers on August 9th, to make the actual move less stressful). Thanks, all!

homeless

We are squatters now.

That's right, living in a house that no longer belongs to us. Today at 11 p.m., we officially sold our house to our dear friends, Amanda and Angel.

Now we wait. We thought we were waiting to close on the purchase of our "new" house on Henry Avenue, but many phone calls throughout the afternoon are making this look...doubtful? Apparently the sellers are not all the way moved out, so we may need to request an extension on the closing (until Friday, or Monday). Whether the seller's bank will approve this, given the short sale status of the home, we are not sure. The other option: we sign a legal document allowing them to stay for 24 hours if they put money in eschrow in the off chance we would need to evict them. Yuck.

We are as calm during this wait as I think any homeless squatters could possibly be. :)

we're moving

Dear Family and Friends,

This week is a really important week for Team Winchell. On Wednesday, we are closing on the sale of our current home; on Thursday, we are closing on the purchase of a multi-family closer to downtown Lynn. We're so excited, as our two-year dream of an intentional living community is coming true!

We are definitely looking for help in the next couple weeks, and are humbly putting out word to all who might be able to give us a hand. We need a few things:

* Help on our moving day--Saturday, August 9th. If you are around for all or part of that day and can help to pack and unpack our truck, we would so appreciate it.

* Help with painting and construction projects on our new home beginning next weekend and continuing until Friday, August 8th. During the two weeks after closing and before moving, we'd like to re-paint a few rooms and build a couple closets. If you have skills in either of these areas, Jason would particularly appreciate your help. I'm in class full-time for two more weeks, so I'm not as available as I wish I could be, so if you have a day, an afternoon, a couple hours...he'd be particularly grateful.

If you are interested in helping, you can email us and let us know when. We are needing to rely on the strength of others during this busy, but exciting, time in our lives, and we are grateful for you.

Blessings,

Melissa

camping!

So excited for a family camping trip this weekend (all the sisters together again!)...after the really tiring (but really, really amazing) week of classes at UMass (the first days of many years of doctoral studies), I am anxious to get away, and I've worked hard all week so I can do just that...without bringing homework along. :)

My sister DD will even be joining us this weekend. She's not usually a camper at all. So this is really a cool trip...Bex is coming all the way from New Jersey with kids in tow, Wins has time to break from med school, and DD is coming to "brave the elements." She sent me this "Deep Thought" (an old, old Saturday Night Live feature I used to love when I was a high schooler), and I'm writing a paper just now (a few more paragraphs to go, and I'm D-O-N-E) and laughing about this one:

"Any man, in the right situation, is capable of murder. But not any man is capable of being a good camper. So, murder and camping are not as similar as you might think."

Actually (to use Orilus' favorite word), I've laughed so often this week, in spite of the craziness of school, new car, curriculum-writing work, house buying and selling, puppyhood, and motherhood...many graces of peace and fun, like sailing the Boston Harbor yesterday...more news to come when I actually have TIME to write...which won't be until AFTER Team Winchell goes camping!

S'mores, mosquitoes, kayaking, biking, and sleeping, here we come...

news

We spent a FUN weekend in Connecticut visiting our dear friends, the Brownes (the couple with whom we started our trips to Mexico, and who brought us first to Haiti, which resulted in us meeting Orilus and Jackson in the first place). So lovely to catch up with them! It's so encouraging to see another family realize their dream of community living...they are building a home on the Browne family property, within a few hundred feet of one set of parents, and within a couple miles of the other set. The house is nearly finished (so different than the empty plot of land we saw when we last visited them in November, and equipped with so many eco-friendly features, including solar panels on the roof!), the kids are HUGE, and their town fair a country treat! I think you know you're raising city kids when a cow stops your son dead in his tracks, and he says, wide-eyed, "Mom, I didn't know they were THAT big!"

And yesterday on our way home we stopped in to see family on the South Shore and to say happy birthday to Jason's Grammie. We were especially impressed to see for the first time Mom and Dad Winchell's new remodeling project...they've created an open floor plan in their raised ranch, and it is beautiful!

And our trip was made possible by our friend, Jodie, who loaned us her car, since ours is not supposed to be traveling long distances any longer. We returned it all in one piece...almost...Kobe chewed through a seat belt, and so that needs to be replaced. Ah, puppyhood.

Tomorrow the P&S for our house will be signed, and we're working out a closing date...most likely, August 9th. That will give us 2 weeks from closing to get into our new house, to build a closet in our bedroom, paint some walls...

And tomorrow marks the start of my doctoral program! I can't wait to begin! If you don't hear from me this week, it's because I'm:
1. in class
2. commuting via a 15-minute walk to the train station, a commuter train, 2 T rides, a 1-mile walk to campus...all of which should add at least 3-4 hours to my day (valuable reading and study time, however)
3. doing homework for class
4. packing a box
5. sleeping (if possible)
6. on my way to Vermont for the Kerr family camping trip (Friday through Sunday)

In all of this, I have to say, our weeks have been marked by a true peace. I'm so grateful we had the time away for our anniversary a few weeks ago...it did much to re-orient us to the kind of summer we aimed to create, and the people we would set out to be regardless of how busy our summer might get. And so far, we are experiencing God's peace here. Orilus said to me today, "Mom, I've noticed how calm you are lately. You have been giving us a lot of grace." Evidence of a work of God's good Spirit in my life, for sure.

July 25th

As of 5:30 p.m. today, our must-close-by date!

Thanks for your prayers...they are working, as we were so in need of more time to close on our house prior to Henry Avenue (the 15th was just too soon). It's so cool to know so many others who are resting with us in God's kairos-time and reminding us, always, that in our lives, He has never, ever been late.

boxes, boxes everywhere

Our July 4th weekend was spent in a rather unusual way.

On July 3rd, we hosted about 30 people at our house--mostly refugee students--for a cookout as part of our city's New American Center youth programming. We enjoyed having these students in our home immensely, though when it rained, our house became quite full quite fast! How humbling (to borrow my friend Amanda's word) to explain simple things to these students, and to see them amazed...how to use the ice dispenser on the front of our fridge, for example. And then on the other hand, to talk with a refugee from Iraq who lost a house MUCH bigger than ours when his family was forced to flee. Always, always I am reminded that "refugee" means so many different life experiences. After eating, the rain cleared up just in time for the Lynn fireworks.

On the 4th, we spent the afternoon packing our house, thanks to the organizing effort of my mom. Before we had packed about 15 boxes, probably, and now we have about 40, so we got a lot of work done in a few hours. Much of my dining room is now packed (dishes, china, etc) and almost every single book in our house, as well as our Ripple Effect office, the boys' school supplies, our upstairs den, most of our living room.

After a day spent yesterday grocery shopping and baking, we hope today to resume packing again. With just one week left of "freedom" before my classes start, I'm hoping to get as much packed as I can this coming week.

In the meantime, the boys are busying themselves with friends...playing outside mostly, and at times visiting their friend Joseph's house. Yesterday we showed them on the calendar that they have a full 2 months of summer still left, and they were beyond excited! Next weekend we hope to visit some friends in Connecticut, and the weekend after, to go camping with my sisters and families, my mom, and some cousins.

We're also in the process of looking for a used mini van (preferably a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna), as we found out a little over a week ago that our car needs too many major repairs. If you know of anyone selling a used van, let us know!

So blessed by the start of the book of Matthew this morning in house church. It was so fitting after our study of the Abraham narrative, to turn our attention now the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that God would bless the world through him. Amazing how God is both king--from David's line, and King of Heaven--and also so "with us," in poverty, in humility, in ordinary family. We talked a lot about God's time (kairos, in the Greek, meaning "appointed time," as opposed to chronos, our "chronological time") and the evidences of God's kairos we see in our own lives. As we pack our house, it's been comforting and exciting to remember that this is God's kairos--the appointed time for change, for moving. As Orilus said, we can trust God to do what He promised, even when His time is not ours. So when I think, "How are we going to do this?!" I am reminded this morning to remember, in God's kairos.

house update

So no one is sure whether we are closing on the 15th or not. :)

We are waiting for the seller's bank to send us their signed agreement on our offer. We're not sure if they set the 15th as a contingency (ie they only accept our offer if we can close by then). If not, then we have until September 1st to close, per our original agreement with the seller. Very confusing. I'm hoping that the bank's agreement isn't going to suddenly show up next week with a closing date of the 15th...can you imagine?! How would we DO that?!

So we are trying our best to prepare as much and as best we can. Our buyers will probably not be able to close by the 15th, so we are looking into closing on Henry Avenue before we close on our house--owning 2 at once for a very short time, as it were. We are faxing paperwork, talking with lawyers, broker, loan agent. A busy time. And in the end, we may find we have until September 1st, anyway...giving us plenty of time for a nice and more leisurely closing in August (we do want to be settled in before school start).

And I keep looking at my house, knowing that I need to pack, but terribly unmotivated to do so. As some of you know, I have a HUGE aversion to projects like this...enormous manual tasks that require a lot of detail. I seriously have to discipline myself to do them, because they strike me as so overwhelming I find other things to do instead (ie write this blog rather than pack my china cabinet, which I promised myself I'd do today and haven't started). I would rather sit in a library with 50 books to read, 2,000 pages to write...

Hopefully my mom will come and save me from what Jason calls my ADD. I call it "teacher's ADD"...I'm so accustomed to my life changing every 48 minutes in a substantial way and the intellectual/decision-making/big-picture rigor of that change, that it is a severe discipline for me to attend to one long, drawn-out, seemingly endless task that requires manual labor. It's my own version of character-building hell.

And now...off to pack china and build my character...and to make my much-more disciplined and task-oriented mother (and husband) proud.

fight poverty

As many of you are already aware, the ONE Campaign is a global coalition--people, non-profits, relief organizations--who create a big political voice to work at issues of global poverty.

I just signed a petition asking the G8 to take urgent action against extreme poverty, and I'm hoping that you'll join me.Sign the petition now at: http://www.one.org/2008g8

There has been a lot of progress against extreme poverty in recent years, but, as recent headlines about the global food crisis will tell you, there is still much to be done.When we unite with one voice and call upon our leaders to take action, we can and will solve these problems.

I love ONE...signing a petition there is so easy, and much legislation and initiative has come about as a direct result of the political action of those involved with ONE. When they need your voice, they send you a quick email, you press a button...and you've signed. They also let you know when and how to contact local, state, or national legislators about particular issues. It's that easy, and it's effective. I hope you'll join.

good news

Wanted to share our big news with you...we found out over the weekend that our offer on a 2-family house here in Lynn was accepted! We have until July 15th to close! Yikes!Please pray with us that:
* the buyers of our home can close next week
* we can close on the home we're buying before July 14th (the first day of my classes)
* we can finish packing our house & start painting the new place...somehow, with me in classes full-time from the 14th through the 1st of August
* we know the Lord's PEACE during this time (and not overwhelming, and not stress)
After 2 years of meetings, dreaming, and prayer, our dream of a community house in Lynn is coming true!