Indeed, timing stinks.

And saying farewells, so miserable.

It's never easy to leave, to say goodbye. It's taken me some time to really feel comfortable and at home here in PR. In the first several months, I couldn't fathom that I'd one day have a hard time saying goodbye to this quirky little town. I remember talking to my Mom on one home-sicky occassion. She didn't really have much sympathy for me. She told me about when she was 5 months pregnant with her first baby and moved from Victoria to Clearwater. No cheap long distance phone plan, no email, no high-speed internet, no cable tv. Okay, okay, you got me there Mom. It was a good reality check. She cried when she moved to Clearwater and cried again when they left 16 years later. Smugly I thought, well, that's after SIXTEEN years. It will take me a loooong time to feel like that about PR. Not so. Even after only 2 years I'm feeling very sad about leaving. (And now, Mom & Dad are returning to Clearwater 36 years after that first tearful arrival.) We'll miss them in Abbotsford but are pretty excited to be able to visit them in Clearwater.

The timing of this move for us has proven to be quite something. Shortly after we moved here we started trying to recruit friends to join us up here. Reid & Brenda actually began to give it some thought. They came to visit in November 2005 to see if they wanted to continue pursuing opportunities here. For over a year they watched for job possibilities but nothing seemed to materialize. It was in the Fall of 2006 that Paul & I started to consider a change for ourselves. By this time R&B didn't sense that God was moving them in this direction so we felt at peace about leaving. Well, wouldn't you know? At the same time we secured financing (another of God's incredible miracles in our lives!), Reid got word (pretty much out of the blue) that he was accepted into training for a job in PR. Can you believe it? I have felt terribly about how this all transpired. We encouraged them so much to come here and now we won't even be here to help ease the transition for them. But God has been at work in their lives as clearly as he has in ours. We are both confident that this is how he is leading our families at this time. But we're both so very sad that we'll be missing out on sharing life together here in PR.

We're terribly sad to leave many others here, but are really looking forward to reconnecting with people back in the Lower Mainland. Most of you know that I lived in Abbotsford for 13 years so it will be like going home. Things are much different there now and we'll have different friends, new church, sort of a new job, but we're excited. I didn't mention in my last post that we don't plan to settle our family in Abbotsford. We will be there for as long as it takes Paul to complete his electrical journeyman's ticket. It could be several years, we'll know better after he gets going again in September. Our long term goal would be to settle in a small interior town. The rest of the details after that are still unknown to us but we'll just wait to see how they come about.

I should also say that we would be open to living closer to Aldergrove if we found something suitable there.

I'm sorry I don't even have a new picture of my cuties to reward you for reading these long posts.