Property Ladder

Many people dream of owning a home, a place of their own and work towards achieving that goal for years. When I applied to study at All Nations, I was torn whether I should first work, save and buy property or just trust that God would work it all out and start studying straight away. 

It felt like the biggest sacrifice in the world, as a lot of my friends had just bought or were in the process of buying, places of their own and doing them up. It was something I would love to have been doing too and the hardest part of following what God was telling me to do. As it turned out, soon after I started at All Nations I met Mark ... and one of the 'perks' of marrying him was was that he had a flat. So technically once the ring was on my finger, I also owned property. (Apparently obedience to God results in him giving you what you wanted in the first place!)

Ironically though, today we have officially taken our feet OFF the property ladder! In a totally counter-cultural decision we realised it made more sense for us not to have a property in the UK right now ... for reasons I won't choose to bore you with! This morning we had the confirmation in an email that someone else now owns what yesterday had belonged to us! And we are so excited about it!

Since we first got married, we have never lived in the flat we owned, just rented it out. We have lived in 3 different places so far ... all of them rented and we will continue to do so for the at least the next decade because of the nature of our mission work. Our second home was the cutest so far (see below). A little stone cottage in a tiny village in Dorset, UK called Bradford Abbas and it's where we welcomed Abigail into the world so it will always hold a special place in our heart!

About four weeks after we first met we were talking about what our dream homes would be like. It was the most bizarre conversation as both myself and Mark found ourselves describing the same house!! That is not a joke!! We now continually find ourselves starting the sentence "When we eventually have a place of our own it will have ..."! So much so that we now refer to it as our 'Forever House' and what it will be like. Who knows where that house will be, but it's going to be amazing and in the meantime we will make wherever we are living home, even if we don't actually own it!