In early December, my fiance and I are moving several hours east of here. We're getting married by the end of December, and then we both start new jobs by January. That means that right now, we're running around like crazy, packing, organizing, planning (all between work shifts)... and we barely know which way is up. Our friends and family members have been HUGE blessings to us, but of course, the inevitable question has popped up: "between the beginning and the end of December, are you living together or apart?"

One thing's for sure: we want to honour God. And we don't even want to give the APPEARANCE of sin, honestly, because we don't want it to have a foothold in our marriage from the get-go. So with the help of a few people close to us, we're flying out, meeting the movers there, moving the furniture in, arranging it the way we'd like it (as well as anyone can in a small apartment), and then in terms of where the two of us will stay until we come back for our wedding, my resourceful, if a bit direct fiance's found a very interesting solution:

Two families in our new church are "adopting" us, one going to each family, for the month until we get married! He called me and said "hey, guess what! We got adopted!"

Of course, my response was, "huh?"

Apparently he called ahead, said hello to our new pastor (the church was recommended to us by our current pastor) and point blank said "my wife-to-be and I aren't living together before we get married, so who wants to adopt us?" and the pastor went, "huh?" and then recovered his wits about him, realized my fiance was serious, and started asking people if they would be willing to lend an extra bedroom for a few weeks.

And people we have NEVER met before have actually stepped forward!

I have inherited a young family with 3 small kids and the parents being about my age, complete with a dalmatian dog and two parrots.

He is going to an elderly couple, who are looking forward to having a nice, strong young man who can rake their leaves for them.

God is good!