I knew, moving to New York City would test my faith, I knew I had to rely on God 100%, but would I have imagined, it would be this much? Probably not. Let me start from the beginning:

We moved to NYC 2.5 weeks ago as an adventure for Josh and me. I wrote about our reasons for our move here. When we got to the city, neither of us had a job and we only had an apartment to stay in until December 29th. This meant we had 3 weeks to find a place for us and for Josh to secure a job.

Only 4 days after we arrived Josh found a job at a local cafe! He applied and 2h later he already started his first shift there! Oh boy, in Switzerland this would take weeks or months until you get to start working. We are very thankful we have a bit of an income until Josh finds something more steady in tech.

While the job search was very short, the apartment hunt was not. We first had to learn how everything worked here. We started searching on Craigslist and quickly found out that there’s a lot of scammers on there. When ever we asked if we could look at the place, they had an excuse and wanted our money upfront. We started using other housing websites, but pricing was high, the rooms small, the broker fees out of this world. We still messaged quite a bit and got to look at a few places. Slowly we realized we probably couldn’t afford a place in our desired area. (Williamsburg or Greenpoint) The upfront costs were around 8000 bucks for a studio!!!

During the entire time we both prayed a lot and we read our Bibles. One day I was reading the Christmas story and I felt like God was telling me, he would provide a place for us, just like he did for Mary and Joseph. While that was very reassuring, I wasn’t sure if that meant we were to live in a stable?!? I also read the verse in Matthew 7:7: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” We prayed a lot and we also searched! In the end we wrote 20 text messages, made 20 phone calls, sent 85 emails, 52 Facebook messages, saw 6 apartments and prayed about 100 times!

While we knew God would provide a place for us, it was hard to know how picky we could be. There were places we could have afforded, but they were in less nice neighbourhoods. About a week ago I started to get anxious. I finally felt like we understood how to apply for places here. (Facebook groups were a big help for sublet deals) Lots of people didn’t respond or they didn’t want any couples to stay in one room. On Sunday morning (December 22nd!!!) Josh found a Facebook post for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath in Williamsburg! It was very nice and way bigger than we hoped for. The guy was trying to find someone by the end of the day. Josh was at work and thankfully our friend Chris came with me to look at the place. It was amazing! We secured the place and just like that Josh and I have a place to stay until the end of May! We will be sharing it with a roomie, but the apartment is on two floors, giving everyone a good amount of privacy.

This entire experience showed me again, how generous our God is. He could have provided a tiny, crappy place somewhere in NYC, but he gave us a big, nice one in the area we dreamed of! So this is our Christmas miracle!

Our Christmas Miracle