We're coming home...already?!

February 19, 2014 my life changed…again.  You’d think I’d had enough the last three years..  Almost a year ago, we came to the Dominican Republic on a 2-3 year plan to gain experience, build the resume and even get our living abroad tax deduction as an extra bonus. Most recently we’ve been happy with a two year timeline and set our tentaive departure for April 2015.  Before moving to this country, we checked on Jesus’ US permanent residence status and saw all he had to do was keep that was to travel to the US at least once a year which was already in the plans for Christmas and seemed to be no problem. A month or so ago we realized Jesus’s permanent residence status was expring this year and needed to be renewed.  Again, no problem, we planned to renew it online.

Until now. 

We’ve learned that you have to be in the United States when you apply for renewal and the timeline for renewal is 3-10 months.  3-10 months with no guarantee of how long!  We’ve run through a lot of scenarios on whether he goes to the US solo or we go as a family but there’s only one scenario that works. 

We all have to move back.

It wouldn’t be worth me staying and paying for our apartment here another ten months without Jesus if it takes that long.  Chances are it won’t but it’s not a risk we can’t take.  If Jesus is in the US for that long, he won’t want or even need to come back anyway so again it would be usless for me to wait here.  We also need to sell all of our things, furniture, etc. before returning to the US and this is the only way we can do it on a set timeline.  We’ve tried all the scenarios and with a tentaive return date of April 2015, no scenario makes as much sense for our family and finances as does returning now.

Obviously we’d rather live in the USA but that dooesn’t make this unplanned curve ball any easier.  We both have lives here.  We’ve made great friends, we are very involved with the youth and other things at church, I teach English classes and Jesus obviously has his job that’s going so well.  To pick up and leave with just over a month’s notice is not easy…we’ve been there before and had even more time the last time! 

Our youth we love so much!

It took me 9 months for me to be ok here.  It’s possible I fell into a depression when we first moved.  I talked to Jesus about it months after I pulled myself together and we both recognized I was a different person and didn’t want that to happen again. I remember when we went to Miami for Christmas and the night before coming back to the DR, I was in tears for fear of getting on another airplane ( I loathe flying) and I didn’t want to come back here.  My sweet husband gave me a blessing that night as we sat in prayer and I came back and I was happy!  The big thing that made me happy was I changed my schedule and my lifestyle and I quit doing things that were hard.  I made my life manageable.  For example, instead of walking with Joaquin’s stroller in 90 degrees to pay a cable bill, I only run errands when Jesus is here or Amarily, our friend that cleans once a week. Granted that’s a minor example of what was hard for me. My point is I’m finally happy here and while in the long term we want to live in the US, it’s difficult to just go without a plan…especially when we thought we had a plan for a year later.  The timeline has been sprung on us and we will need a job, a car, a place to live, etc…luckily we have a few ideas under our belt that I’ll blog about when something, anything, becomes final.  Many of you are probably wondering about our home we own in MN as a place to live but we’ve already agreed to renew the lease to the renters and we don’t want to take on that mortgage without knowing our job situation so suddenly, so as a rental property it shall stay.

So that’s the update!  You can all be happy I’m coming back!  We’re happy to move back but it’s not going to be easy rushing to plan and make things happen.  Sometimes I get confused about why everything fell into place for us to come here and why it felt so right only for things since then to have gone a little sour.  Our taxes on our home in MN went up some time after we signed the lease so we lost some money on our rental property the first year and now this…just kind of crazy. However we came for the opportunity and experience and that we definietetly got! For that, I will always be grateful.  Not many people can say they moved to a third world country for a year, not as a missionary, not as a student, not even as a former resident; I moved as a mom and made myself a life.  Now I’m just praying that Jesus’s potential employers will see working abroad on the resume and not care that it was only for a year although he may get to extend that by working remotely...maybe. I’m going to miss so many people and my heart is already sad.  Like I said, it took me nine months to be ok here and I finally am! My tribute to this country and to my friends will also be in a coming blog post.  But…you all know I’m excited to return…just as soon as we get settled…again…but hey, it’s America right??

Prayers appreciated.