I have been wanting to post this sooner but we have been so exhausted and have been recuperating from our trip. We got home late Sunday/early Monday morning. Overall, our trip was a huge blessing and very productive. God did and is continuing to do some amazing things which leaves us more in awe of Him.
We arrived to Portland Friday morning. It's a quick 2 hour flight and we headed straight to my first job interview. I had two that day and they both went well. Hoping something will work out soon! Please continue to pray for an opening. After my interviews we had dinner with Trevor's sister and her family- her husband and our 3 nephews and 1 niece. They live about 20-30 minutes from where we will be located. We have been praying about the NE area which is just NE of downtown. There is no church in that area and unanimously the pastors that Trevor met with last month said they need a church there. So this was the primary area we were looking at.
We had several houses lined up to see- none of which were in the exact area we were hoping. Ideally, we wanted to be 5-10 minutes from downtown and in the heart of NE Portland. We saw one house and realized it was just too far from where we wanted to be. I had been house hunting for over a month and it was SO difficult to find anything in the neighborhood we felt we needed to be in. I had seen an apartment complex online and thought if we had time we would check it out. Originally we were against an apartment because usually parking is bad and it can be hard for people to find and moving onto the 2nd or higher level is hard. So we had decided against it from the get go but thought we might just check out one complex. The complex I found online was the only place in the area we wanted to be. We actually stumbled upon a Peets coffee and the complex was right down the street. Trevor is working on transferring to Peets up there so please pray that works out! After stopping at Peets, we called the complex and immediately got in to see a unit. It was a bottom floor, 2 bedroom, 2 bath, newly remodeled unit. It was easy access to the street and there was street parking (ultimately parking is horrible almost everywhere in Portland anyways, so this parking wasn't great but it also wasn't horrible because people walk everywhere in this neighborhood). We also wanted at least a 2 bathroom so that when we host a bible study, people could use the extra bathroom. And lastly we wanted a big living room to seat a lot of people. Oh and a washer and dryer would be nice.
This apartment had it all. It had everything we were looking for and was in our price range. As soon as we saw it, Trevor and I had an immediate peace and knew it would be our home. We left and prayed about it and ended up putting a deposit down that day, cancelling our other appointments. One huge thing we had traveled to Portland for was already done! praise God! It was a huge relief.
After finding our apartment, we had dinner with a pastor from Calvary Vancouver and his wife. It was such a blessing to meet people our age and make friends. The next day we visited Calvary Chapel Portland which is about 15-20 minutes West of downtown. We met some more people who welcomed us to the area which again made it feel more like home. We visited downtown Portland after church and stopped at Voodoo Donuts which is AMAZING!! If you ever go to Portland you need to go there.
We truly had a great trip and are so excited for the next few weeks. In less than 3 weeks we will be in Portland! That blows my mind. Please continue to pray for the people of Portland and the lost and pray God continues to open doors for us.
