Here we are solidly in October and officially less than two months from our move to the Netherlands. It’s been both amazing and overwhelming to see how quickly God moves once he’s said it’s time to go.
This past month has been a whirlwind of activity in our house. Shortly after our last update we purchased tickets for our flight and let me tell you, something about buying one-way tickets really makes this next step suddenly feel real. We have spent so much time working and waiting on God to make a way, that the reality of this new ministry is only now starting to sink in with me. Sure, I’ve been talking about it (incessantly to a degree), but the “some day” and “what ifs” now have a specific day and a certainty that is both exciting and panic inducing.
Let me give you a picture of what that has looked like for us in the past four weeks.
We purchased tickets. We scheduled and attended school interviews for the separate schools our children will be at in the first year. We applied for multiple houses to rent in the short term (it is an incredibly competitive market!) and by the grace of God “viewed”, filled out paperwork, and signed a lease on the only house on the market in the city where we will be living. We scheduled new resident registration appointments for the day after our arrival. We applied for new passports (and got it back already!). We applied for more apostilles (still waiting on those). We sent in our paperwork to apply for our visas.
David has had multiple faculty meetings. He has also almost completed writing the course he will be teaching in January. We started hunting down suitcases on Marketplace. We have begun the process of organizing in order to pack.
I’m sure there’s more, but it is currently escaping my jumbled brain.
This does not include David’s academic work with the papers he is writing for a conference next month, nor the kid’s current homeschooling curriculum, nor our efforts to raise the remaining financial support we will need to sustain life and ministry in the Netherlands. There is just so much going on!
So I’m going to pause for a moment, both for your sake and mine, and ask for prayers for peace among the chaos. We are very excited to be starting this next step – this long awaited ministry – even while beginning to mourn all those we love and will be leaving on this side of the ocean. Your prayers are much appreciated as we come to this very big transition. There is still so much to do, and my mom brain is already pre-stressing about how my kids will handle these changes, but I know God is the one calling us to go, equipping us to serve, sustaining us in changes and trials, leading us into this new ministry, and preparing a place for our family to grow where he is planting us. So in this relatively short update, please continue to pray for us in these next two months as the details stack up, my overstressed brain freaks out, and our family excitedly gets ready for what’s next.