The Story – Part 4

Now that we knew we were leaving, we had to take action and make things happen. This whole process started in November of 2018. That is when we started compiling the documentation that we would need to supply for our visa applications.

Now’s the point where I need to back up a bit. See, at this point we had been talking to our good friends, Jazzii and Tom, about what we needed to do to prepare to immigrate. Jazzii and Tom immigrated to New Zealand from Virginia just two years earlier. Just the story of how we know them is kind of insane because we met them after they had already immigrated, just a few months before we decided we were definitely moving to New Zealand. We were connected with them through Deanna, my friend who I was introduced to by my close friend, Toria. Anyway, at Toria’s baby shower, Deanna overheard me talking to Toria about New Zealand (you know, trying to convince her to come because I’d miss her dearly if she didn’t). Deanna stopped me and said “New Zealand?! I have a friend there! I should connect you two!”. And so she did! She connected me to Jazzii, and Jazzii introduced me and Matt to her husband, Tom. Me and Jazzii quickly became good friends. In fact, we talk almost daily.

From the start, Jazzii and Tom have been helping us tremendously. They gave us all the tips and tricks of immigrating to New Zealand. They Skyped with us multiple times to chat, answered any questions we had, and even prayed over us. (Keep in mind, this took place before the big YES, so Matt was skeptical, but willing and genuinely curious). Tom and Jazzii have continued to be not only an amazing resource, but great friends. They have been so encouraging this entire time. All that to say, we started compiling documents in November per their advice, before we even hired the immigration agency (who they also recommended: New Zealand Shores).

We are still in November 2018, and this is also when we listed our house for sale. In the months prior, we had been having garage sales, repairing things around the house, and getting ready to list. We had been busy. Once our house was listed, we were relieved. Now we could focus on New Zealand stuff again. We were still attending BridgePoint even with the sermon series having ended. In fact, they started a new sermon series that spoke clearly to us also, it was called Taking Flight. HAH. Literally, that’s what we are going to have to do to get to New Zealand. This sermon series was the one that helped us to figure out that we belonged at BridgePoint until we moved out of the area.

The Taking Flight sermon series ended right around the holidays. At this point, Christmas has passed and it’s the New Years Service. We still had one thing that we didn’t agree on: when to hire the immigration agency. Matt wanted to hire New Zealand Shores once we sold the house. I felt like we needed to hire them the first of January. At the end of the sermon, the pastor added in (and I remember this very vividly) “Go and do something you can’t afford!” Hold up. Really? Dave Ramsey would kill you if he heard that! But seriously, that was for US. Once again, we were on the same page. We couldn’t afford to hire the immigration agency without the money from the sale of the house, but we hired them anyway, courtesy of Chase Freedom, on the first of January.

Fast forward to February. I’m exhausted. We’re having showing after showing, still no bites. We had a few people express interest, but nothing came of it. It was a lot of work getting the house show-ready while also wrestling two kids, one of who insisted on licking the mirror on the way out (guess who). We decided to take a HUGE leap of faith. We were going to move out of our house. The house that still very much was ours. The house that had zero serious buyers lined up after 100 days on the market. At this point, God had been giving us signs to go. This was long after we were done looking for signs, but God humored us and kept sending them our way.

Click for Part 5:

The Story – Part 5