Okay, now back to the more recent future. We built our dream house in Ft. Calhoun, Mike and I both enjoying our jobs , the kids were doing excellent in school, made great friends and love our church. And then Carter started doing lacrosse, Mike coached it and it meant a lot of evenings and weekends driving back and forth to Omaha for them and the girls and I would be busy with our own things near Blair. Many families go through this and I'm sure they all have a very strong marriage, but Mike and I were starting to be frustrated by never seeing each other and having so many outside commitments. It came down to suck it up or sell the house and move closer to Omaha for work and lacrosse. We put the house up for sale July 2012, thinking it would take years to sell because of the price range and the size of the house and acreage, it sold in 5 days! They wanted to move in at the end of August so we went full steam ahead looking for a house, we toured over 60+homes, put a bid on 3 different homes and nothing took. We wanted a semi-fixer upper in the Papillion area. We didn't think it would be that hard, when we moved to Omaha we looked at 3 homes and choose from 1 of them. That was our first sign that GOD had something planned for us and wanted to keep us mobile. This went on the rest of July through August. School was to start on a Wednesday and we decided to just get an apt. that Tuesday. On to the second sign, when the new owners first came to look at the house I accidentally ran into them when they were driving up our driveway, they stopped and asked if I was the owner and I said yes, they asked a few questions about the house and they asked what plans we had after leaving the house. I answered them that we had always wished to live out of the country so that could be an option. I remember thinking why did I say that? I mean we had plans of buying in Omaha, God knew and it just amazes me how he works. Now that was in July/Aug 2012. I remember before moving out of the house that there was great plans for us but I had no idea how great! Sign 3 Before we finally moved out of the house we went and looked at this house on a golf course, upon entering Mike and I immediately loved the floor plan, it was an older house and needed a lot of repair, plus you just have to get a country club membership :-) and not to mention the monthly neighborhood fees. Anyway, Mike was about to put a bid on it and I just remember a huge internal push inside me to drive down and stop Mike from putting a bid on it, I know that was the Holy Spirit, I got the same feeling when a month later i had a feeling that Mike's time at Grace U. was getting done. I stayed quiet because he loves working at Grace, but that November Mike came home one day and said all the things he came to Grace for, restoring the budget, selling south campus and other things were all completed that month and now he felt God was sending us somewhere else. Okay, so now there were several job interviews, but nothing felt right. Then one day (March 17th) Mike received an email from someone he works with at Grace saying she knew of an international school needing a Business manager. I'll be truthful, when he told me it was Africa I thought no, that's not what God wants us to do, I'm sure he wants me to live in a nice white picket fence house in a nice safe American town. I thought Africa = living in a hut. I told Mike I would have to pray on it. I should have known it's what God wanted because the kids immediately were up for the move. Mike and I made a pro-con list and the only cons were safety and health. Well now I realize that you can't be guaranteed safety or health here in America but I was still the stubborn hold out. The next day I went to Costco and came back and made a trip up to drop off groceries and came back down and loaded up again. I was making my way back to the apt and a car came driving by and a middle aged man yelled out of his car at me he yelled "your a Bi**h!" I was shocked I said what did you say? and he responded "You heard me!" and then drove off. Now I have never seen this man before or after, he was older so it wasn't like some kid thing to do, I was already at the apt for a good 5 min so it wasn't my driving, I had no idea why he did this. I know some people think that is no big deal but to me it was huge, I was crying all the time, couldn't sleep, stopped going to the apt gym because I was scared to be trapped if he came in, I felt accosted. Now just one day after that Mike gets a junk email of the top places in the world of friendliest people according to CNN. Friendliest 1. Iceland 6.8 2. New Zealand 6.8 3. Morocco 6.7 4. Macedonia, FYR 6.7 5. Austria 6.7 6. Senegal 6.7 7. Portugal 6.6 8. Bosnia and Herzegovina 6.6 9. Ireland 6.6 10. Burkina Faso 6.6 It's actually tied for 3rd place. So now i cant say that we would be so much safer/happier here in the US. Then came my obsession, cookbooks and magazines that month all of my magazine subscriptions had African food as the main subject. Now for the final straw. We were watching youtube videos of Dakar Academy and happened upon this one. It has teen boys running around and playing a form of tag with water guns. At first when I watched it I was so bothered to see these boys hunting each other down with (Water) guns because my mind went to all the school shootings, I was appalled. And then I realized, wait a minute, this is how kids use to play here a long time ago (although this video was just done this year) before all of the school violence. This is such innocence that we don't have here anymore. Mikes favorite movie is Blast From The Past about a family living underground in a bunker and above them all the drugs and violence is taking place but the family is down below still in the 1960's. Well going to Dakar will be our way of going back to the past and letting the kids have somewhat of an innocent youth. If nothing else it will make for some great stories to tell and let the kids know there is so much more out there then their little bubble. God is sending us to Senegal and we are so excited to go and do his work! http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uALv_NF23DI&feature=relmfu
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