In the beginning!

Before I can continue with what's happening now, I have to go back to 'our beginning'. God has been preparing us for what is happening now.

In the beginning...

Pete and I met in Mallorca in 2006. Both far from God. After telling him that I will not be getting married or living in England, we went to live in England four months later, bought a two bedroom house and got married in 2007 and had our first baby in 2008.

Before we got married we went to South Africa so I could introduce Pete to my family. While we were there we stayed with my cousin who asked us to watch some DVD's about creation and took us to a church service that impacted us greatly. I came back to faith and Pete got a faith.

When we returned to Manaccan we joined the Methodist Chapel where we stayed for ten years, and went to Light and Life in Helston for a short time in between and got baptised. In that time God opened our hearts and minds to a few things, progressively. One of these things was that children are a blessing, "Blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them" Psa 127:5. I wanted to stop after our two daughters were born, but Pete was not so sure about taking any drastic measures, and so David came along. When I was just pregnant with David God gave me Psalm 128. I knew David was going to be a boy. I was still working at this time, and during a Church service about two months before his birth (December 2011) God spoke into my soul "What are you going to do" It was about continuing to work. I cried a lot and let the work go.

A little while before this Pete had left employment to become Self-Employed, which has been a real blessing as he could be around to help when needed, and was home a lot for lunch (at that time).

"your children like olive plants all around your table."

Psalm 128:3b

Benjamin came along in 2015. After he was born I had a real conviction/realisation of keeping the children close. I was going to homeschool anyway, but it was more of a calling to be a strong family unit and enjoy being together as a family.

Reuben was born in the Summer of 2016. We thought he was going to be a girl. Well, he turned out to be a boy and his name means "behold a son"

Stuff

Over the years we spent a lot of time on boats. When we got to five children going out on boats was not particularly easy or pleasurable anymore. We were putting quite a bit of time and money into them. I lost the energy to go through all the rigmarole of preparing for a day on the water, so we almost stopped using the boats. Boats had been a really big part of Pete's life from a young age, but God was slowly helping him to let go.  It was the year of 2017 when Pete finally let go of the boats.  We took the rib out and sold it. It is funny, the hold material things can have on you. What Pete had been struggling to get let go of actually brought him a sense of relief, like a burden lifted, once it had gone. Something we were to experience a bit later on also.

In 2017 I got pregant again. By this time our two bed house was now getting a bit cramped. We had made everything work up to this point by being very inventive. Pete is now a master shelf builder after a lot of "Honey, can you please build a shelf here... and there" We have been through seasons of sleeping downstairs on camping mattresses, or having the children in one bedroom, the other as a playroom, or a girl and boys room. At the time of Reubens birth the children were all in bunks, Ben in the cot and Pete and I on the floor in their bedroom.

When I got pregant I wanted to sleep in a proper bed. We had made it work but it was starting to feel like a bit of a squash. We started praying and asking God about moving or extending. Extending had always been on our minds.

We had gone around in circles trying to decide on the best option (or most affordable). We had tried very hard to find a local rental property also. Eventually after borrowing some more money, Pete drew up plans for an extension and we got planning permission. The ground was cleared and the footings were about to be dug when............ the neighbouring landowner decided to claim he owned a part of our garden. Initially this was very frustrating, and we could not afford to get into a legal battle.

We are sure that this was God's doing, He had slammed the door shut on every attempt of ours to stay in that village! We had been spiritually restless, and felt that there must be more. Suddenly hope and expectation soared. God was going to move us. We dreamed of a big garden where the children could play, chickens and a veg garden. And a lively church where we could make friends with spend time with young families like ourselves.

I was excited. We started packing, we had to be ready when God moved. We were looking at houses, but every house got snatched up so fast. Also, trying to find rental accommodation with five children and one on the way is very hard as most Landlords reject you.

In December we booked a Christmas (the last one we celebrated) holiday away. A lovely little cottage in Devon. A week before we went on holiday we went to a new Church, which was going to be our new base. On the way we looked at a property in Cusgarne, near Truro. At the start of looking for properties we did see this one, but it was too expensive and too far away. A couple of months or so down the line it came up again, but this time the price had dropped. It was a huge property, we didn't think we could afford it, but we went to have look anyway. Through a series of events clearly of Gods doing, we knew this was the right place to come to. We phoned the agents to accept the property on the 22nd of December, and moved in three weeks later on the 12 of January. Amazing time.

And so our new life had started. New house, new church and soon, new friends. We were so excited about what God had done for us. We were sure God had blessed us with this wonderful house and was blessing Pete's work. Was this to be a blessing or a lesson?