Welcome to our home

Many of you have asked what our apartment looks like. Here it is! We still have a few more pictures to hang in various rooms, and we have to hem the curtains we made for Eliana's room, but other than that our apartment is complete. We love our home. It truly feels like home to us--not just a place where we sleep. We prayed for a place that could be a refuge for us and our family as well as a place that we could open up to others for parties and to show hospitality. God more than answered this prayer.

Enjoy this little pictoral tour of our home. Hopefully, you'll come see it in person some time!

 Our bedroom is the smallest room, but it has a bathroom attached to it and a closet.

Another view of our bedroom (the closet is on the other side of the wall behind the dresser and you can see a little bit of the bathroom behind there as well).

 We had our first house guests this past weekend when friends who serve in France came in to visit for a couple of days before our annual conference. They're standing with Jonathan in the dining room area of our sala.

 A view of Eliana's bedroom and her closet.

 Another view of Eliana's room from the doorway. It's complete minus hemming her curtains and hanging up a couple of more pictures. We can't wait for her to come use it!

 Our entry way (the view from the door)

 Our guest room/office

 Another view of the office nook in the guest room.

 Our hallway, which houses Bethany's closet

 Our kitchen (the cabinet off the wall is where the dish washer goes which has been broken for more than a month but is being replaced tomorrow!). On the other side of the door is our pantry with some extra storage space as well.

 A view of our sala (living room). The quilt box, china cabinet, and table and chairs were made by local carpenters, who did a fantastic job.

 Another view of our sala, decked out from many trips to Ikea

 Yet another view of our sala--this is the room we live in, so we wanted to let you get a good view of it. Plus, it's our largest room by far.

 The sala from the dining room portion of the room.

 Our amazing view. We live on the 10th floor (which is the 11th floor since the ground floor is considered 0 in Portugal) overlooking a private school, soccer field, and Catholic church. We absolutely love our view, which can be seen from each room since almost the entire eastern wall of each room consists of windows.

I know this picture isn't too exciting, but many people do not have dryers here and hang out their clothes from lines attached to their windows. We are extremely happy to  have both a washer and a dryer, plus there is a little shelving unit for storage you can't see in this picture.

So that's it! We love our place. Pray for us to have opportunities soon to invite people over for dinners and coffee. Pray for us to have Bible discussion groups in this home as well. Pray for us to get to know more of our neighbors and for them to feel comfortable dropping by.