House Searching, New Friends & Missionaries

This last week we have been searching for a house to move into. It is really stressful! They do it a little differently here. All rentals go through an agency and the agency posts and inspection time(s) up on their site which is in 15 minute time frames, usually 1-2 times a week. You show up with all the other families that are interested during that 15 minutes to look at the place. You then fill out a long application for EACH house, which is just shy of giving your first born and signing your life away, and then you see if you get approved or not. You have to give them birth certificates, passports, drivers licenses, vehicle registrations, references, rental receipts, work history, etc. It's kind of ridiculous really. You are basically competing with 10-20 other families. The rental housing is hard up right now because Canberra has lots of people moving in to work right now. They also charge rent by the week and not by the month (even though you pay monthly, so it makes no sense). The average cost to rent a 3 bedroom/ 2 bathroom home is about $500 a week. Isn't that insane?! We finally found a place we really liked this week and are crossing our fingers that we get approved. We will hopefully know if we get it by next week. However, we are still going to a few homes this weekend and will keep filling out applications until we get a place.

If we get the place we want, we would be really close by to our new friends James and Liz. James works with Jeremy and has been AMAZING in helping us figure things out and watching out for us. They have a little boy, Daniel, that just turned four. Teagan LOVES playing with him. They are both rough and tumble little boys, so it works out perfectly! They are seriously considering moving back to Utah with us when we move home. Wouldn't that be awesome?! They just moved here for the job last September from England but have always wanted to go to America. They moved here mainly because they said the quality of life and education is better here for their son than in England. They are originally from Scotland and have cute Scottish accents. We really enjoy spending time with them and know they will be our family while we are here.

A side thought on this: I have a new found respect for missionaries. Not only are they young (19 and 21 years old) and still trying to figure things out, but they get sent to new countries where everything is different... by themselves --- and on top of that, they proclaim the gospel. In being the minority religion here, I see how much scarier it is when you are actually close to people that know nothing about LDS. We pray that we can be good examples of our values to those we are around. We know it is much more important for us to uphold those values being away from Utah, because just about everyone is LDS in Utah. Even if people don't uphold their values in Utah, they usually still believe it anyway. So, it gives people some slack, if that makes sense. But here, no one knows the difference of what we believe, so it's that much more important for us to be true to our standards. Know what I mean? :)