Packing, Sorting, Packing, Storing…

This week has been quite the whirlwind!! We’ve been asking you to pray this summer for wisdom for us while we sort and repack and store our household possessions. A year ago, we sold not only our house, but pretty much all of our furniture and most of our belongings. We kept what seemed to be essential at the time. We knew after going through cultural training that we needed to re-evaluate what is truly “essential” and do some sorting, tossing, organizing, and selling. Again. We weren’t sure how hard this was going to be since last year, it was excruciating (the 114 degree weather didn’t help the yard sale, either!).

Well, I am pleased to say that your prayers were greatly answered! After 5 days of serious work, everything is safely repacked, well organized (including a nice typed up sheet to coincide with our numbered boxes…I LOVE organizing ), and safely stored in my parent’s basement. It was nowhere near as emotional as I thought it would be. It was actually freeing! We can now honestly say that we only own things that mean something to us and things that will genuinely be used in the future. I have two half-full boxes of things that I would like to someday end up in Peru with us…and that’s it. I must admit…most of it is Christmas stuff. Have I mentioned I also like decorating almost as much as organizing?

We realize that not everyone is called to the lifestyle that we are living. We don’t consider ourselves “minimalists” by any stretch of the imagination. But, we do realize that hanging onto all of our “stuff” also means hanging onto our life that we had in South Dakota. We loved it there. If God hadn’t called us on, we’d still be there. So, to hang onto all of that would just keep our hearts and minds back there. And to ship it all down to Peru would immediately ostracize us and help us stand out even more than blonde hair, blue eyes, and American accents will anyway. It feels good to have a fresh start. We look forward to furnishing our new home in Peru in a completely different way than we did here. We look forward to a new life and all that entails. We also look forward to the day either we or our children will open those boxes and pull out old memories.

I guess I’m just so full of the feeling of being honestly blessed. I mean, really, how many people will get to experience this kind of life?? It’s actually really exciting.

Brian didn’t want me posting too many pictures of our stuff, but here’s a couple. And a few of Gunther. He gets really nervous when he sees boxes and packing supplies, but he consoled himself by dragging stuff out of our trash pile and finding new toys…including four old stuffed animals! One of which is almost bigger than he is. We’re sure gonna miss our puppy.

Thanks for your prayers! The REAL countdown begins now. Just a little over a month…

Brian packing all of our dishes.

Some of our pretty decorations that will be in storage. I’m not sure the French motif we had in SD would go well in South American anyway!

Gunther and his new toy! Silly dog.

Everybody else will post cute pics of their kids…You guys get to see cute pics of our dog! He conked out on the couch last week…his tail was wagging and he was snoring…so funny.

Brian’s other job this week was chopping up logs for my father. My parents had five trees taken down two weeks ago and Brian has worked diligently to get them chopped, split, and stacked before cold weather hits.

This was a stump he worked on getting down, but discovered the roots were far too deep. Only took him two long hours of digging to find that out! Poor guy.

Home?

Hello everyone -

For those of you who were wondering…we did make it back to Moscow, PA, this evening. We had a wonderful, relaxing trip home. We stayed in the Williamsburg, VA, area Sunday and Monday night, did sight-seeing Monday and Tuesday morning, drove up to Lancaster, PA, Tuesday afternoon, and stayed with a friend. This morning, we visited our headquarters (the “IMC” – International Ministry Center) and spoke with the Personnel Director and spoke to the candidates going through Candidate Orientation right now and other staff at the IMC for a few minutes about our time at CIT.

While talking withour personnel director, he informed us that he has had to up our support need because of the drop in the U.S. dollar over the past year. So, please be praying for us! We thought we had about 1/4 left to raise; now it seems like we have about 2/3 left to raise.

We’re glad to be back with my folks; Gunther (our dog) remembered us which was a wonderful plus for me!! We’ll be here til probably the second week of May and then we’ll head out to SD.

We’ll keep you posted on “life” here while we raise support!

CIT

Well, it’s Thursday morning and we are in preparation mode for packing to go to the Center for Intercultural Training. Well, let me rephrase that. I am preparing…Brian is finishing up the bathroom. He’s remodeling my parents’ bathroom and he’s still in the process. So, we shall see when he actually ends up helping me out with the whole packing thing!

We will be at CIT until the middle of April and right now, that seems so far away! We know the classes are going to be intense and it’s going to be some critical study time. But, that’s pretty much all we know. Brian is looking at it like a huge adventure. I am looking at it like the planner that I am and wondering how in the world can I be prepared for something I know nothing about?? The whole point is to prepare us for cultural shock. I think it’s working.

So – this is our first blog! I really hope this will keep everybody up to date and informed on our life at CIT for the next 9 weeks without having to write mass emails every week. Leave us comments – PLEASE – so we can feel connected and loved.

Thanks for visiting!

-Lisa