Looking Back: Part 6

When we look back at spring 2020, it feels like a million little pieces fell into place in the blink of an eye. We’ve already shared about getting and packing our shipping container, but that was just one small piece of the puzzle.

But first, if you missed our other “Looking Back” posts and want to catch up before reading today’s, you can find them here:

While packing our container, there were several other things we needed to do: we had to put our house on the market and sell it quickly, I had to resign from my job, we had to figure out where to store our container while in language school, we had to plan our drive out of Alaska, and Allen had to wrap up his final semester at Wayland Baptist University.

It felt like too much at the time.

But we saw how God came through over and over again.

We put our house on the marked on Sunday evening and by Monday at noon, we had a full-price offer. We negotiated some and signed a contract by Tuesday evening. It closed within 6 weeks without incident or any issues at all. Not only that, but our amazing realtor and friend, Anna from Alaska Dream Makers, was a literal God-send. I texted her freaking out one night and she came over at about 11:30pm to help with packing and organizing. And the next morning? She was there again at 7:00am with coffee and breakfast burritos. Anna took me to the post office to mail some massive boxes to Oregon, took a load of stuff to the dump and thrift stores for us, and came to wave us away from our house in Alaska. I’m not kidding when I say we could NOT have done it without her!!!

I resigned from my job in early spring, as the beginning of the budget season was underway at my place of employment. It was such a difficult decision to make, but my boss was so gracious. We ended up changing my last day several times and each time, he was so generous and understanding. I was able to leave with good relationships in place and have done some consulting work for them with my personal small business.

We weren’t sure where to store our shipping container while at language school. We didn’t want to pay to store it somewhere, but weren’t sure what else to do. But our sweet friends offered up a section of their side yard and at nearly the last possible minute, we had it moved to their house.

We didn’t know how we were going to drive out of Alaska with the kids and all our stuff; due to COVID-19, we weren’t supposed to stop anywhere (including restaurants and hotels) and had to be out of the country within three or four days. So we opted to fly our kids to Oregon to stay with my parents, fly back to Alaska, and finish packing and closing things up for our drive out. It worked out so well and we’re thankful for how God orchestrated all that.

In the middle of all that, Allen was finishing his classes and finals. Because of COVID-19, his graduation ceremony was cancelled (boo). So we had a mini celebration at our house for him. He worked so hard to wrap up his degree and did such a good job. I am so proud of how he persevered to graduate!

So as you can see, wrapping up life in Alaska was really the next big thing that God did.

We were hoping to start our language classes in France in September 2021, so we knew we’d need to leave Alaska in the early summer so that we could visit family before leaving to go overseas. Obviously, that isn’t what God had planned, but we’ll close out this mini-series and chat about that next week!

A bien-tôt!