We've been discussing the possibility of renovating our house. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, we really like it just the way it is, but we're not going to be able to fit many more people in here before we outgrow the place. As it is, the whole church meets here on Sunday morning and every other Wednesday night. Friday night is Bible study night for the women. We started out saying it was just for grown ups but the kids like to play together so much that the whole clan is here every Friday night too. On any given weekday we usually have at least one of those families here just to talk or visit. So, we're feeling the wonderful yet stressful dilemma of not enough space.We rented a building for a while in the beginning but that proved to be expensive and very undesirable to most people. So we're trying to keep it at home in hopes that it will not always be in our home, but that someone will step up and offer to take a group into their own living room. We recognize that may take some time so we are looking for an answer to how to fit them into our space until that happens.
Because we ran out of room indoors, the kids' class meets on the back patio. We talked about enclosing that because it will eventually get too hot to meet there. For that matter, it may get too cold if last winter is any indication. We also entertained the idea of taking out the wall between the living room and Andy's room to make a larger area for the adults to congregate. If we did that we would also convert the garage so Andy would get his room back. We don't have the money to do all this but we know God does so we have been praying about it.
Last week Ben's carpet was wet. We thought the boys had spilled something, but day after day it wouldn't dry and turned out to be a leak from the bathroom. It must have been there for a while because the plumber found black mold. The operation to remove that is much more extensive than we had realized - like a crime scene cleanup. There went the money we didn't have for renovations. Maybe that's God's way of telling us not to worry about taking down walls or enclosing porches but it doesn't yet address the problem of limited space.