Moving to Nebraska

It is official - we will be packing up our little home in Kenosha, Wisconsin and moving to Stromsburg, Nebraska. Keet will be the Associate Pastor at Stromsburg Evangelical Free Church, working primarily with youth but having other responsibilities in the areas of outreach, evangelism, and education. I will stay at home (yea!) to be with Cole and to support Keet in whatever ways he needs.

We really enjoyed our trip to Stromsburg this past weekend. As I said in my previous post, the town seems like a very nice place to live. Definitely a place that will be great to raise Cole (and any other little Reddens that come along). Everyone who lives there loves it and seem genuinely happy to be there. The church seems like a healthy group of believers and we were happy to see that many of the members of the church are very involved in many of the ministries. Keet will be able to learn quite a bit from the senior pastor as he has been there for quite a long time. By the end of the weekend, we clearly sensed that we were being led to accept the offer if it was presented to us. The church met Tuesday night and the search committee called and extended the offer. We were happy to accept.

There will be some downsides to living in a small town. The main thing will just being a bit further away from any type of shopping. I don't necessarily mean department store shopping, but stores like Target, Walmart - places that can be quite handy. But, it will just take some extra planning on my part and I think we will be fine. The town does have a very nice small grocery store - so at least we will be able to count on that.

While we are excited to start the next phase of our lives, we are sad to leave Wisconsin. We love our church very much and have developed some very close relationships. I think one of the hardest things to think about (in an ironic way) is that Cole won't get to see Renee (his babysitter) and her kids anymore. When Cole first started going to Renee's it didn't seem to be working out very well. That only lasted a little while and for quite some time he has been very happy and we know that he loves them all. I think a lot of Cole's personality has come from being with Renee's kids. He is very social and whenver he sees other kids, he gets so excited!

And, we will miss our fellow group of gamers (especially Tim and Renee). We have been introduced to a lot of fun games and in some ways, see it as our responsibility to convert Stromsburg! :)

Our tentative plan for now is to head out some time during the week of August 18th. Probably that Wednesday or Thursday. Our biggest concern right now is our house. We would really like to be able to go to without having the house here in Kenosha. We would appreciate your prayers in this matter. If the house doesn't sell, it will be quite difficult for us financially each month so we are just praying that the Lord would bring a buyer soon. We have contemplated renting it out, but that seems very stressful to think about.

We will be in Indianapolis for all of next week, so this will be a good time to see family and friends before we move. While we are moving farther away from family, in some ways, we feel like we will not be seeing family that much less. Travel will be a little more difficult, but I think there will be a lot of effort made on both sides.

Thank you for all your prayer and support during this time. It means a great deal to us. We will keep everyone updated.