A New Life in New Martinsville West Virginia

This month has been a very busy month for the Bills family. I have started two jobs, one as the coordinator for the tutoring center at West Virginia Northern Community College, and the other as the pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church. So I am now officially a bi-vocational pastor. I will have to write more about that later.

We closed on our new house this past Friday, meaning that we are committed to our life in New Martinsville for the foreseeable future.  I have disliked being a part of that generation that changes jobs frequently.  Perhaps now I can settle down and act like my parents and their parents and work the same job(s) for a couple of decades.

Our new home is on the north end of town.  We have a magnificent view from our back porch of a quaint, seldom used, grass airfield, the river beyond that, and the Appalachian hills of Ohio beyond that.  The house has been an incredible gift from God.  We marvel constantly at how beautiful and simple it is.  To date, we have only moved about 20% of our stuff from the other house.  It is a shame to have to clutter this house up with the other 80%.

New Martinsville is a wonderful, small town.  It has all the essentials very conveniently located within a couple of miles of our new home.  What we cannot find here, we can find by taking monthly trips to either Wheeling or Parkersburg.  Those towns are only about an hour away either direction.  And what we cannot find there, we can find in Pittsburgh, which is only two hours away.

We have been incredibly busy.  Kathi with setting up the house, Spencer with his new school, and me with my two jobs.  The big boys are getting a bit of a break from school, but will have to pick it up after we get everything moved.  They will likely be working well into the summer.  But the consensus of us all is that we are loving being here.

Kathi has been feeling much better recently. This is definitely related to getting a good grasp of how to best treat her immune deficiency with medications and diet.  She is stronger now than she has been in a couple of years.  Some of this may also be due to the fact that we have moved out of an unbearably stressful situation. Regardless, we now live with the expectation that at some point she may begin to spiral down, beginning another cycle of ups and downs that will last several weeks.   Our hope is that if she does begin to spiral down, her up and down cycles will be less extreme, less frequent, and more manageable.

We are praising the Lord for our new church home, for the opportunity to freely minister in accord with my conscience and vows, for our new house, for our health, and for God's provision for our needs.  All green grass has brown patches, and there is no telling how large our brown patches will be.  But for the moment, we are enjoying the foliage, sweet aromas, and beautiful sounds of a fresh springtime in our lives.