Good questions:
1) Not sure of the number. Probably decent, but not perfect. My husband has had a credit card for 6+ years and made complete payments every month the whole time. He did have some medical debt from before he had health insurance that he couldn't pay. It's been more than 4 years since the accident, so he no longer owes money, but it will show up on his credit rating. I have nothing to speak of -- perfect CC payments for a few years, no debts.
2) Looking online we've seen some houses in the 150k range that are 3/2s and 1,100-1,700 sq ft, about what we're looking for. I'm expecting that our mortgage payments will be more than our current rent, but I'm also expecting that if we rented another apartment, it would be more expensive, too. (With a baby, I'm demanding somewhere with a washer, which our current apt doesn't have.)
3) That sounds neat, but our town is too big.
4) We intend to stay at least 3 years, possibly longer. It's also possible that we would move away for 1 year, then come back, but since it's a college town, there's a huge demand for rental space, so I'm not too worried about what would happen if we were gone for just one year. (Or am I too optimistic?)
Good question, too, about the MHA - yes, our jobs are directly ministerial in nature, so we're for sure qualified.