Our house in VA is officially not ours any more. The closing happened yesterday, and we cannot give enough praise to God who made every step of the process just sail through when it often was unlikely, and now we are freed from that potential millstone.
AND... we already have a new house here. It's almost unbelievable and basically unheard of to get housing so quickly. We were expecting to spend a few weeks or even a few months in the temp lodging, but when we checked in a the housing office yesterday, Ammin asked the lady what we were looking at for a waiting time, and she replied that she had a 4 bedroom townhouse available to offer us. We hadn't filled any paperwork yet, so we didn't get to see it until today. It's not luxurious by any stretch; there are things I like about it [the kitchen has easily twice the storage and more than twice as much counter space as our last house, the yard, though tiny, is fenced, and there is a large playground right behind our yard] and of course there are things I don't like [almost everything about how it looks - I was going it go into specifics, but I'd rather not. Of course it will look better with our furniture and pictures on the walls, but decorating to make it feel homey will be a challenge.] Anyway, we are thankful for the house and hopefully we'll be moving in soon. We should find out on Thursday whether or not our stuff has arrived.

So- other news. We've been here 4 days, and haven't made it off base, though we've had that intention each day. Definitely tomorrow. There are so many things to take care of right away and it's just plain hard to get anywhere with 3 kids in tow. Especially since it's been raining and we have to walk everywhere. Oh, well. The base is very small, everything is basically within walking distance. The exchange it huge but the commissary is tiny. I was very near tears when I walked into the commissary. It's weird too; they have an entire aisle of laundry detergents (I'm not exaggerating) and roughly 2-3 choices of everything else (only slightly exaggerating). And no oxyclean so I fear for our clothes! :)
Sunday we went service at the chapel on base. It was both enjoyable and encouraging. One chaplain who gave the welcome asked if anyone was there for the first time and then he spent a minute stating their beliefs, and he actually said "we exist to know Christ and make Him known" (for anyone who may not know, that's verbatim the purpose statement, slogan, whatever you want to call it of Pillar Church, where we just came from) Ammin and I almost fell off our chairs. Then a different chaplain came up to give the message and preached very boldly from Song of Solomon.