Arrangements and Thanks

Sometimes people ask what arrangements we needed to make to come down here.  While there were lots of moving parts, one particular aspect I like to think about is all of the help from so many of our good friends and even others.  It is without question in my mind that we would not and could not be here right now without their generous help.  Jehovah has given us an amazing brotherhood and I am truly grateful.  Below are some of the things that we had to do to arrange being down here and some of the awesome people that extended their help.  In effect, this post is kind of a cross between the description of what we had to do and a big ‘THANK YOU’ to the people who helped us:

Shed Building Weekend!  Building a shed at my parents’ house gave us more flexibility than renting storage because it set the cost of storage one time rather than having ongoing monthly payments indefinitely until we return.  So, we bought a shed package at a lumber place, got it delivered, and rolled the sleeves up for a weekend.  This is where (or at least one of the many times) the amazing Nichol’s family shined!  Petric, Chad, and Kade worked morning until night the whole weekend.  We had help on Saturday from some skilled brothers from Olympia like Lon Gerhig, Richard, Kyvie, and Paul who loaned us tools we needed, helped us get the floor joists square, the rafters cut, and the walls and roof up.  By the end of the weekend, we had gone from dirt to a nice 12x12 sturdy structure!  I can’t thank my parents enough, too, for letting us build the shed there and for their hospitality throughout.  Here are some pics:

   

 

Roofing is some nasty, dirty work…but Chad was a champ.

 

 

 

 

 

Roofing would have taken a lot longer without Mike Beriault’s staple gun – thanks, Mike! (If I told you how long it took for us to roof this little shed, you would probly laugh way too hard – so I won’t)

 

 

 

 

 

Digging the trench for utilities! (ok, it was just electricity)

 

 

 

 

Voila!  A mostly finished product…

 

Our Dads finished up the door during the week, we painted it the next weekend, my Dad’s friend Tom got the electrical in, between Sam’s dad and Petric the insulation was installed…and a shed for all of our worldly belongings was born!

Packing and Moving.  They say that moving is one of the most stressful things that you can do – uh, yeah.  When you’re packing the house you’ve lived in for the last 7 years, it’s amazing how much junk you find that you had hidden in corners and stuffed into and under other stuff…all for ‘when you would have more time’ to deal with/organize it.  Well, when you’re moving you definitely don’t ‘have more time’ to deal with those things, but you’re forced to anyway because it has to go somewhere.  Then you deal with the monumental task of trying to organize and label to some degree the boxes you’re packing, just so you’ll have a semblance of a clue and maybe be able to find stuff some day down the road when you need it.  In retrospect, after the way we packed the shed, I seriously question if all that ‘organization’ will make one iota of difference.  Anyway, with all of the boxing, packing, organizing, tossing, selling, wrestling over what to keep and get rid of….well, we needed help.  So, Sam’s mom, Jane, came over and stayed with us a couple times for days at a time to help.  Don’t ask me how there can be this much work, but we would literally sort and pack from 8a until almost midnight each day.  We can’t thank her enough - without Jane, we would probably still be there sorting through stuff right now.  Allison, Chelsa, and Corey also came over at different times to pitch in – we really appreciated their help!

The main moving day actually came and went pretty smoothly.  Van Sun and his bible study, Stan, came from Lynnwood; Kevin Connors, Petric, his boys, including nephew Reese, Allison, and Jane were there.  We were able to load up pretty quickly within a couple hours.  Most were able to car train down to Olympia with us to unload into the shed, and we were back in the evening – just like that moving day done.  All the help made it relatively easy – thanks you guys!

With all of the big stuff moved we focused on all the little stuff the last couple weeks, running them down to the shed in separate loads in Sam’s MDX, and figuring out how to fit all of the stuff we wanted to bring into the two checked pieces each the airline allowed.  We scrambled literally to the last day, last hour with this.  So we were extremely grateful that the Krueger’s offered to do the final house cleaning after we left!  Apparently, Linda had to do battle with our oven, but in the end she won.  We appreciate those that helped Linda, too.

Another family we will sorely miss is the Schierberl’s!  They threw a really nice going-away party for us – thanks for the send-off Tom & Karrie!  I can’t seem to find the pics right now – but I know Allison has a bunch…

When you leave the country but still have a house there, your bank account, the stuff you couldn’t bring, mail, etc…lots of little things come up that need to get taken care of. It’s pretty tough to do these things when you’re on a different continent.  Some banking things and bills can be done online, other things can be taken care of on the phone, but there are some things that simply have to be done in person.  I need to thank Petric, Howard, Sam’s parents, and my parents for all of the help they’ve provided with these types of things.  Everyone needs to have friends and family like these awesome people – we’re thankful we have them.  Hopefully, we don’t wear them out with all of our requests…

That’s it for now.  Will post more of our experiences here soon…