Tag: adventure

Hazmat suits and miracles.

I knew we were sick, I just didn’t know how sick. 

I’m not sure knowing would have changed anything though.  We had been told to avoid any official personnel.  Government people, police, and medical officials were definitely to be avoided.  That was proving difficult as I opened my hotel door, to a hallway full of hazmat-wearing officials.  They knew my name.  They knew I was sick.  And they wanted to take us to an undisclosed location to quarantine.  

I argued at first.  “In America, 100 degrees is not qualified as a fever”.    

I played dumb.  “I am not sure where my traveling companions are…it’s just me”.  

I bargained.  “I will come downstairs with you if I may use a phone to call the United States”.  

And finally, when it seemed as though there were no other options, I agreed to get in the back of their ambulance and go with them.  

It turns out, the CDC in this particular country is first-rate.  The day before a passenger sitting a row ahead of us on our flight from the US checked himself into the hospital.  He tested positive for H1N1 – or swine flu.  And the CDC kicked into action.  They detained and quarantined anyone sitting within a couple of rows of patient zero.  Because we were the first of our group to return to a registered hotel and check in using our passports, we were the first to be picked up.

After a quick call to my contact in the United States, “Hello…I am being picked up by some government officials.  No, they cannot tell me where we are going.  Yes, I will try to call you with more information.  Can you please let the other parents know?  And maybe call the embassy?”, I go back to the other three students in my group and let them know what is happening.  Until now, I have kept the CDC officials busy only talking with me and have asked them not to interrupt the sleep of my “colleagues”.  

We knew we were sick, but we didn’t want to say it out loud. Really, I thought we had altitude sickness mixed with some dehydration. I thought our bodies were still adjusting to the 8,000-foot elevation. We weren’t one hundred percent why we were being picked up – after all, this country wasn’t known for its hospitality to Christians.  We deposited all evidence of the local missionaries into the bathroom toilets and deleted records from our phones.  We buried the two bibles deep into our bags – this wasn’t part of the plan and we weren’t sure what to do with them.

We rode down in the elevators and I threw up right before the doors opened.  “Just leave it,” I said as we walked out.  “I don’t want them to know that I know that I’m sick”.  The hazmat suits swarmed around us; we put on surgical gowns, hospital booties, masks, and hair nets.  They ushered us into the waiting ambulance with its flashing lights eerily lighting up the whole street.  I asked again where we were going, but at this time, the translator was no longer with us and no one could understand my question.  

We arrived in the dark at a building with a row of doctors and nurses outside waiting for us.  This is still one of the most confusing parts of my memory.  I am sure it must not have been as dramatic as I remember, but it was dark and I was scared and apparently I had swine flu.  I remember being rushed inside a harshly lit building with someone yelling, BOYS ON ONE SIDE AND GIRLS OVER HERE.  I tried to say, “They told me we would be kept together”.  But no one was listening. 

In the end, it turned out alright.  The boys were simply on one side of the building and the girls were on the other side.  In between the two corridors was a hallway meant for official personnel only.  There was a red line that meant we were not to cross the threshold.  We were each given a room with a bed and a bathroom.  There was a sliding window in our rooms where they could serve our food without being exposed to us.

As chaotic as that memory feels, I am sure it was quite orderly and calm in comparison to what it could have been.  I didn’t know it yet, but in the days to come, I would thank God for bringing us to such a facility with access to much-needed medical care for much of our group.

Of the eleven of us, nine would test positive for H1N1.  One would need extensive care for complications related to H1N1 and dysentery.  It certainly wasn’t the trip we had planned for.  In fact, all the things we had discussed not doing seemed to be happening.  But, somehow, in the midst of all this, we were able to share God’s hope with the very people we were supposed to be avoiding.  Over the course of the eleven days we were quarantined, doctors and nurses would ask us questions:  “Why did you come here, really?  Why do you seem so happy even when you are so sick?”  

I wonder sometimes if they ever think about that time when eleven Christians from America were quarantined on their watch?  If it impacted them in the same way it affected us?  Was it just another day at work?  Or did God plant something deep in their hearts during those days?  I don’t know if we will ever know on this side of heaven.  But, we do know that God was with us.  He was actually protecting us.  And he brought us home safely – which still feels rather miraculous.           

You’re Moving Where?  For How Long?

– A Short-term International Move with Two Young Kids    

These were the two questions uttered most often when we shared the news of our short-term move to Australia.  Many laughed and then stopped when they realized we weren’t joking. 

I get it. It does almost seem laughable – it’s a long, long way.  And it’s not exactly an easy move, there are lots of logistics and it’s a ton of work for a relatively short time.  However, as I found, the internet is full of ex-pats who want to help you with your own move.  And it’s not as odd as it sounds…others have done it.  If they did it, you can too!

Here are the top tips we learned in preparing and actually making the leap.  

1 – Decide what you are bringing and what you are leaving

There are a lot of different things to weigh as you decide how much to bring and whether you will ship any of your belongings. This is a great time to experiment with being a minimalist!  You can always pick up whatever you didn’t end up bringing – you just might pay a little more for it. 

Here are some of our thought processes:

  • We were only planning on a 1-2 year stint in Australia.  
  • Due to Covid, it was taking 3-5 months for shipping companies to ship a container on an ocean liner.  And it was excessively expensive to ship via Air Freight.  It would have cost more than our items were worth.  
  • Because this was only a short-term relocation, we didn’t want to move ALL our things (sentimental, winter clothes, kitchen appliances, furniture).  We rented a storage unit in the States (make sure it’s climate controlled) to store items.
  • Bed measurements are slightly different in Australia, so unless you are bringing mattresses, don’t pack your linens.
  • The voltage is different, so unless you are also packing voltage converters, don’t bother bringing your appliances. 

2 – Decide How You Will Pack

  • We opted to pack in suitcases and duffle bags and check our luggage via airplane.  This way, we always had everything we needed and it was ultimately the cheapest way to travel.  
  • Check your airline requirements.  This might be a good thing to do as you compare prices.  I just assumed that international travel meant two FREE checked bags with every ticket.  However, Delta only allowed us one each and the other bags could be checked for a $100 fee.  However, it’s still less expensive than shipping them with a company.
  • You could also look into Send My Bag courier services. We didn’t know where we were going to be assigned to quarantine, so had no address to send luggage ahead.
  • We ended up packing in three large hard-sided suitcases, two carry-on suitcases, and four large duffles.  I asked an ex-pat community on Facebook what type of bags to use for a move via airplane and received amazing input!  We ended up with THESE. Spoiler alert: They survived the trip.

3 – Pack Your Bags

  • The best two things we bought before packing were a bag scale and compression bags for our clothes.
  • In an effort to put a cap on the items we were packing, we divided our bags into different categories.  Once a suitcase (or duffle) reached its weight capacity, we had to stop adding things or begin to trade out items.
  • We had a Kitchen Suitcase, a Homeschool Suitcase, a Kids’ Toy Suitcase, a Tech/Books carry-on, a Day of Traveling Carry On, and duffles of clothes.

Look Inside our Kitchen Bag:

  • Two good knives
  • Plastic cutting boards
  • Measuring cups and spoons 
  • Silpat
  • Rolling pin
  • One plastic plate and bowl for each child and child-size utensils
  • One water bottle for each family member
  • Silicon smoothie straws
  • 1 cookie sheet and 1 muffin tin
  • Aeropress and filters
  • Small travel-size dish soap
  • Laundry detergent for 10 loads of laundry
  • Two yeti mugs 
  • Two kids’ mugs
  • Hot chocolate mix, Starbucks Blonde Roast ground coffee, Mason’s Marks and Spencer’s tea, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter
  • Various utensils for cooking: meat thermometer, Wine/Beer opener, can opener, cooking spatula 
  • Bose Speaker

Look Inside our Homeschool Bag:

  • Luke’s 1st-grade Math, Language Arts, and Handwriting curriculum was purchased before leaving the United States. You can order American curriculum from Australia, but be prepared to pay a much larger shipping cost.
  • Chloe’s handwriting book, letter and number flashcards
  • Science Curriculum
  • Select educational books that no one could say goodbye to for the year
  • The New City Catechism for Kids
  • Jesus Storybook Bible
  • 2 small dry-erase boards
  • dry erase markers
  • sticky notes and pens
  • Watercolor paper and watercolors
  • Coloring supplies
  • Nature Journals and colored pencils

Look Inside our Kid’s Toy Bag:

  • Scooter for each child (Pro Tip: You can take them apart to fit in a suitcase for travel!)
  • Magnatiles
  • Legos
  • Books
  • Lovies and 2 stuffed animals per child
  • Sarah’s Silk and clamps for fort building
  • Art supplies for crafts (glue, googly eyes, yarn, etc).
  • Odds and ends that couldn’t be left behind and that fit among the scooters

Overall, we were happy with the decisions we made in packing. I almost felt like we took too many clothes, but it’s so hard to know exactly what a climate is like until you actually get there. And we had the added twist of a Covid lockdown, which means we left the house far less than we might have under other circumstances. The only thing we really regretted not having (and we couldn’t easily find in Sydney) was our cheese slicer. Which, isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things!

All things being equal, I would likely pack in the same way if we were to do another international move – unless the company wanted to pay for our move.

What would you pack in your bags for an international move?

It’s only a year.

“It’s only a year!  We can do anything for a year!”

Three months into our year in Sydney, these words reverberate in my mind.  In hindsight, a year sounded so short.  In the grand scheme of our lives, it is nothing, just a blip on the radar.  And yet, when the sun rises and sets daily and you wake up 365 times in order to see said year through to completion, I have discovered it doesn’t feel like “nothing”.  It still very much feels like we are living.  It feels like these days are real and that these memories will be real.  And the hard still feels hard and if I am being honest, sometimes a bit unending.

365 days mean a lot of coffee being brewed at home, it means an entire grade for my oldest to learn at home.  It means my husband will spend his days acclimating to a new job with a new work environment and culture – from home.  It means we will visit our beloved playground hundreds of times – sometimes twice a day.  It means at least 1000 meals and snacks and drinks will be prepped and handed out and mostly enjoyed around our table.  

What I didn’t realize and couldn’t have known was how easy it would be to feel unsettled and transient.  I didn’t know what it would actually feel like to desire to put down roots and yet feel the need to hold back.  To feel both at home and homesick.  Home in that this is where we are living – this is where our little family calls “home” each day.  This apartment with two bedrooms and two bathrooms (which is glorious and by the way might ruin me for the future!) is where the legos and strollers and our clothes are right now.  And yet, not home, because it’s not quite ours.  

We didn’t pick out the furniture, have a combination washer and dryer (hello, most inefficient appliance ever!), and are using the almost too well-loved frying pans that were here upon arrival.  And because we are here for only a year, I have resisted hanging anything on the walls.

When I think of making our home homier, my mind immediately wonders how we will get rid of that particular item at the end of the year – will I sell it on Facebook marketplace, just throw it away (which sounds so wasteful!), pawn it off to a friend we haven’t yet met, or hope that a charity shop will come to take it away?  

I’m sure so many people have done this before and I am just a click away from blog after blog after blog of advice.  But, not one of those writers could have told me how I would actually feel in the midst of a year that seemed as though it might fly by, and yet now feels as though each day is taking all the time in the world.  No other person or writer could have prepared me for what it feels like to have left home and created another home for a short season during a global pandemic with the city locked down.    

And yet, a year is 365 days more than nothing.  It’s still a real season of our life and memories my kids will have and that we will have for the rest of our lives.  And I wonder if it’s actually worth putting something on the walls…because, yes, it’s only a year.  And yes, we can make do with anything for a year.  But, now that we are here, do we really want to?   

The Whole Earth is Full of His Glory

The content expresses the author’s experiences of witnessing God’s work around the world, from Nepal to Kolkata, and the decision to move to Sydney. They reflect on moments where they felt God’s clear guidance and the beauty of experiencing God’s glory in different places. The author cherishes the opportunity to show their children the vastness of God’s world.

Isaiah 6:3
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Psalm 24:1-2
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;
for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.

There have been hundreds of moments that have led us to where we are today.  So many little moments and experiences and opportunities that lead us to step confidently through the door that God was opening.  And it didn’t feel forced, but it also felt as though God had so clearly swung wide the door that to not go would have felt disobedient.  

That time during worship at a conference where the Lord whispered to me, “The entire earth is mine. It’s more than what you’ve seen with your eyes.  I am going to show you more of my earth”.  

The time I backpacked into the foothills of the Himalayas and gave out radios so the Nosu people could hear stories about Jesus come across the radio waves.  In the days before our trip, God gave me a  picture of people from every nation bowing down and worshiping God – including the faces of the Nosu people.  And I clearly heard, “If you don’t go, who will”?

When my parents decided to take their 7 and 13-year-olds to the U.K. for the first time. Even as a 13-year-old, I remember stepping out of the train station in Bath, staring in wonder at how small everything seemed compared to the United States, and feeling as though I might be seeing the world as it truly was for the first time.

I remember volunteering at one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the sick and dying in Kolkata, singing the same worship song over the ladies there that nearly 10 years later I would sing over my own children at bedtime.  I saw true poverty in Kolkata for the first time and heard the Lord whisper, “Even this is mine”. 

That time God gave me a prophetic word for our guide in Germany. I nervously prayed with her and was suddenly filled with a tangible sense of God’s joy and pleasure as a woman I didn’t really know, heard that she was known and loved and had not been forgotten by God. I marveled that God was at work halfway across the world and I got to be a part of it. 

From across the United States to Jamaica to Mexico, from Nicaragua to Uganda, to China, from Great Britain and Ireland to Germany, Australia, Switzerland, from Spain to India and Costa Rica, I have learned that God is at work all over the earth.  As the Psalmist says, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it”.  We don’t go to bring God to these places, but we do get the joy of bearing witness to what God is doing in these corners of the world.  

It might sound different, it might smell different, it might even feel different.  But the beauty of our Father is that he is Lord over all, always at work, redeeming, creating, and breathing life into unexpected places.  And we get to witness it.

And so, when the opportunity came for us to move to Sydney, Australia for a season, it felt as though for many years, God had been laying the foundation for the decision to be “yes!”.

It felt like God was breathing life into our family’s value of travel and adventure and that we were about to be able to show our kids that God’s world is bigger than we can see as never before.  And when we saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time at the famous Bondi Beach, the kids danced with joyful abandon and Psalmist’s words came to mind, “The whole earth is full of your glory, Lord”.