9 weeks the stars align

Where to begin ...

About a year ago friends of our in the neighborhood told us that they were going to move from Alpharetta, GA to Denver, CO to start a new church. Wow ... what a crazy idea. The idea itself was not crazy, but the logistics of going to a brand new place to start a new church and everything that goes with it sounded very daunting. But, they both had such a peace about it, that it got me thinking ... Is it time to go abroad again?

We knew that we wanted to do another international rotation. (The first one will be another entry for another day) Jonathan explored some options and they were New Zealand, Switzerland and Hong Kong. Both New Zealand and Switzerland were not good fits for Jonathan's job skills, so that left Hong Kong. Jonathan talked with some of the partners and expats that were already there and got a bit excited about it. But then there was a huge lag in communications with the people who were heading up the international rotations. One of the biggest blunders that they could do was just leave people hanging ... which they did ... a lot.

In January we got word again that they were VERY interested in Jonathan coming out to start in March. Now, to catch up ... we started in August, talked with people in September, touched base in early November and did not hear anything until the second week of January. Crazy! We let them know that we were interested still, but needed to know a couple of things .. most important, "Do you plan on paying us? and Will it be enough to live on?" Important questions!

A bit more waiting took place until the first week of March when they emailed Jonathan and made us an offer to come. They finally talked about money and how their expat stuff was going to work for us.

We talked and talked and talked some more about the things we needed in life to live, what experiences we wanted to have as a family and if this was the right thing for all of us to do right now. I talked with the girls in the car on day on the way to run errands and explained to them that they made an offer to our family to go and see what they wanted to do. One of the major adjustments that we were going to make was the I was going to home school the girls. I know ... wipe the shocked look off your face and keep reading. For us, getting the girls into an international school was going to be tough. There was not a guarantee that the girls would get into the school and then where would we live? Once we made this decision (I will discuss more later on this), everything else fell into place. We now are open to living anywhere on the islands and also have more freedom to take some vacations when we want to.

Do you know when things align and there is no rhyme or reason to it? I feel like this happened with us and this decision. They are little things, but they started to add up in my head and kept me thinking about things. It seems that the AAA magazine this past month talked about adventuring to Hong Kong; Gabby and I caught some international home finder show about Hong Kong; along with a few other things. I know they are small, but I just felt that it was something nudging us to do this. The craziest thing about this, Jonathan was our hold out.

I think that brings us up to date with this. We are now 9 weeks out and have already made lists upon lists of things to do. The girls are going to finish this school year and we are going to give them around 5 days to say good bye to all their friends and most of all Grandma and Grandpa. So, right now May 28th is the last day in the US. What is really crazy is it is 1 month shy of 10 years since we started our last international rotation. Here we go!