Media Coverage
As articles appear in the press we will reproduce them here.
The following is an interview that appeared in the January 2012 edition of Woman Alive
I've become a house sitter'
Sheila Jones (65) from Great Wyrley in the Midlands is a retired researcher and teacher in higher education, and currently an artist.
She worships at St Mark's and spent her summer house sitting for a couple in Beaconsfield. A few years ago, she joined a worldwide organisation called Christian House Sitters, whereby one looks after a house for anything from a week to several months. She has so far looked after properties in France, England and New Zealand. Sheila has two grown-up children and four grandsons.
She has been widowed for 30 years.
About five years ago, I was browsing the internet and wondering if there was an opportunity to house sit in New Zealand, when I came across www.christian-housesitters.com. It is not a house swap, although I could put my house on the website for someone to look after while I am sitting for someone else if I wanted to. It costs just £25 to sign up and it's a matter of seeing what
locations and properties fit in with the holiday time you have.
I went to France last year and New Zealand the year before that. The longest time I have spent away is nine months in New Zealand. This year, I stayed in England and went back to a lovely house in Beaconsfield, where I have been several
times before.
As a house sitter, you often have to look after the family pets. Sometimes it's cats or dogs, and this year it was also chickens. But in return, I had all the eggs!
It's an affordable way of seeing different parts of the country and visiting other parts of the world. I have enjoyed taking part in worship in other churches and it's lovely to come back and share those experiences.
I usually go on my own, but I have on occasions taken my son or daughter. However, it's important to let the owners know if there is more than one of you going, so they can get the rooms ready.
I would love to go to Canada, but although there have been houses that have come up from time to time, so far they haven't fitted in with my free time.
Sheila's Tips:
If you do house sit, make sure you are there before the owners leave. It enables you to meet them properly and know where things are.
One of the questions asked when you are linked up is whether you would like to be put in touch with one of the house owner's friends. I would say yes and I always try and go to their local church when I am there. It is always good to see how others worship.
Have a spirit of adventure. If you are retired, it helps you get out of the "retirement mindset".
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Christians have keys to free worldwide lodging
Thursday, January 5, 2012 - Contemporary Christian Travel
by Ruth Hill
WASHINGTON, January 5, 2012 - Are you a member in good standing of a Christian church anywhere in the world? If yes, you have the keys to free house stays and/or house and pet care while you are away. In a world of rising vacation and holiday travel expenses, this can be great news.
At non-profit Christian House Sitters (CHS), you can register as a house sitter - one who stays rent free in homes around the world and cares for pets and premises - or home owner - one who provides the premises and receives free caretaking - or both. Member registration in the sitter category costs 25 British pounds a year and all proceeds go to charity. Home owners register for free.
And there's more good news besides free vacation stays. CHS founders and managers Ray and Marilyn White donate all membership fees to the Home for Peace ministry in Kenya for orphaned children.
Why Kenya? The couple both have personal and ministry roots in Africa. Marilyn was born in England but grew up in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Ray also has roots in South Africa, where he grew up. Johannesburg is where they met and married. Now semi-retired in the UK (West Sussex), they manage CHS and continue other ministry endeavors. There's more about their professional backgrounds and hearts for the Kenyan children on the CHS website.
Ray and Marilyn founded CHS a few years ago after they did a two-month house sit in France. The Whites advise home owners how to qualify house sitters, but function primarily as a connection site for members who are connected to a recognized Christian church.
"We cannot guarantee to find you a house or a house sitter, but we can list details for people who choose to join the service," said Ray White. Privacy is also a hallmark of CHS. White said they do not disclose member information beyond what they receive for publication on the site. One house now on the CHS site is available in St. Antonin, France for three weeks in February. A German Shepherd and three goats come with the four-bedroom property. Houses in Australia, South Africa, England, Wales and Canada are looking for sitters.
Though CHS participation is pretty much on the honor system, the ministry has many satisfied members who have cut costs for their personal travel as either house sitters or home owners who rely on other members to care for their homes and pets while they are away.
"We live in a ranch style three bedroom house located in Tacoma, Washington and we have one cat," said John, a CHS home owner member. "We worry about leaving the house unoccupied when we vacation so on finding Ray's service we decided to give it a try.
"We contacted CHS one week last spring, and in a few days we had received applications from eight families who all wanted the house" he continued. "We chose a Canadian couple. The couple supplied us with two references from their local church fellowship and we checked them out. We then spoke with them a couple of times by telephone and agreed to the details. They did a magnificent job of looking after our home and our cat. We now consider them friends, and later this year we will again be contacting Ray for a sitter so we can go to Calgary and visit with our sitters, Helen and Roger."
CHS can be your new ticket to 2012 travel around the world. Check it out as a way to reduce travel expenses for trips around the world!
Read more of Ruth Hill's columns at Contemporary Christian Travel in the Washington Times Communities.
This article is the copywritten property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media.
REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
NOTE Reproduced with permission from Ruth Hill. Washington Times
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CANADIAN CHRISTIANITY
July 2010
Turning pew sitters into house sitters
Christian House Sitters is an international non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom that claims to match vacationing members of recognized Christian churches with other vacationing members of recognized Christian churches.
It provides home owners with reliable people to look after their homes and pets free of charge while they are away, and it provides house sitters with rent-free accommodations while they are on vacation.
The service is free for home owners and costs 20 pounds a year for sitters.
All income from the site goes towards supporting starving orphans in Kenya.
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Article From Joy Magazine. January 2010
Article From Cathedral Connections. St Peter's London Ontario
Spring 2009
A UNIQUE ADVENTURE - HOUSESITTING IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
By Joyce Hilton
At some point we all think about a dream vacarion, especially one that costs little and allows you to enhance your love of Christianity and its history and architecture.
My dream vacation and journey began when I stumbled across a website that promised just that. It was called Christian House Sitters, an Internet based service that brought Christian home owners and Christian house sitters together.
Christians home owners who wanted to take a holiday and needed some one to look after their home and! or their pets while away could apply. The other side of the service accommodated persons who could not afford a holiday but would now be enabled to take a break and see other countries. Their only expense wouId be the cost of travel and their food.
It was totally Christian based and required everyone involved to have a reference from their church.
The registration cost was twenty dollars Canadian for the year which allowed me access to information about various properties in different countries that required a house sitter.
A couple in Norwich, England advertised for a sitter for three months. I was born in England and wanted to experience the atmosphere of its mediaeval history and churches. Norwich seemed like a perfect fit! It is a church enthusiast's paradise. It possesses more mediaeval churches than any other English City. There is an old saying in Norwich that there are 52 churches for every week of the year and 365 pubs for every day of the day. (My interest was in the former.)
In addition to its great cathedral and the ruins of three other buildings, there are thirty-one other parishes in Norwich that have survived.
I arrived in England in early January of this year and met my awesome hosts who were leaving in the next few days for New Zealand.
Before they left, they drove me to Great Yarmouth, a city on the east coast of England situated about fifty miles away. Along the way, we stopped to look at the ruins of a thirteenth century Augustinian Priory. Even though the walls had eroded to half their size and roofs had long disappeared, you sensed that this was once a holy place and the likely home of earlier saints. It was the first step in my quest to visit ancient holy places. ............................................................................
..................I left realizing that I was a part of a much larger faith community, one that transcends countries and history
This is an extract from an article in CHURCH TIMES dated 27th April 2007
Swap your way to a holiday
For an affordable holiday offering all the comforts of home, consider Christian house-swapping, suggests Rachel Harden
LAST YEAR, Ray White and his wife, Marilyn, decided they wanted to take an extended break from work. Financially, however, they were not in a position to fund a long holiday. House-sitting seemed an ideal solution.
"We had heard a lot about it. Looking on the internet, we found a whole range of sites. We picked an American website we liked the look of and signed up. We chose a house in France, where the owners were looking for sitters for a couple of months to care for the plants and various pets, including dogs and a cat. It was 45 minutes inland from La Rochelle, an area we wanted to explore. We contacted the owners, they liked the sound of us, and it was all set up."
Apart from the fact that the dogs needed more exercise than they had been warned, the Whites enjoyed their two months on the Continent.
But they came away thinking it could have been so different. "The owners knew absolutely nothing about us, we gave no references and no one checked if our personal details were correct. We could easily have rolled up with a van and taken every-thing. We were also conscious, on the other hand, that we might have arrived to an entirely different set-up to the one described. In a sense, both parties were open to an abuse of trust."
On their return, the Whites decided to investigate whether there were any Christian house-sitting agencies. There weren't. "I am a psychologist, and my wife and I work in stress management, but we were no longer working full-time so we thought: why not set one up?"
This month, then, saw the launch of their Christian House Sitters. The site received 500 hits in the first week.
The attraction of any house-sitting service, explains Ray, is that no money exchanges hands, and the use of the house and running expenses are free (apart from the telephone) in return for certain chores like pet-sitting or watering the plants.
The new service, overseen by the Whites, charges £20 per year for administration: once registered, clients - whether they are looking for a sitter or offering their services - have access to all the others on the list. A minimum of ten per cent of any income will go to support Unsung Heroes, a Christian charity in South Africa.
Apart from adding obvious safeguards - like not giving out email addresses until references have been checked - no one is accepted on the site without being a church member.
"We feel strongly that if people swap, they will also get a chance to swap a new church family while on holiday if they want to."
The couple are aware of the new Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs), which came into force this month, making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. They do not ask invasive questions, but stress that after registration each client sorts out their own house-sitting arrangements. This is left to the discretion of the individual. Users are also encouraged to set up their own contract of agreement (the website contains suggestions), as the Whites make it clear that they are not liable if things go wrong
Ray White believes that house swapping and sitting will become increasingly popular with Christians, because of its lifestyle challenge. "Not only is the concept of sharing very biblical, but there is also that degree of trust that you may not have with other agencies. Of course, it, has the added attraction of freeing up funds which can be used for other things - maybe even giving some to charity."
Helping Christians have a Free Holiday
(Mon Oct 20 2008)
During this time of international financial crisis many people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford a holiday.
Research has clearly shown that during times of severe stress holidays can be more important than ever and can help prevent many stress related health problems.
Christian House Sitters provides a worldwide service to enable members of recognized Christian churches to enjoy a rent free holidays.
It also enables home owners to have a reliable person to look after their home and pets free of charge whilst they are away.
This can save both parties a great deal of money and therefore enable them to benefit form a much needed break that they may otherwise have been unable to afford.
This service has already helped many people from around the world and it is expected that as the credit crunch bites many more will benefit from this facility.
