job hunting

during the first hours of our drive to fort worth, I was surprised to receive a call from the seminary's office of human resources, in response to one of the several applications I'd submitted with them. Because I was driving at the time, we set up a phone interview for the following morning.

The next morning we were in Caledonia, MS...which on and off again reception for cell phones, so mike and I went to a coffee shop[ in Columbus (a few minutes away) where we could look up the job description again, and I could also be available to receive my interview call.

Upon reviewing the job description, I still honestly couldn't tell you what all the job entailed....it looked involved.

20 minutes later, my interview was finished. The phone conversation had gone well, and I had been asked to come in for a face-to-face interview with the HR director. Of course, since we weren't IN fort worth yet, that interview had to wait 5 more days...till monday.

On Monday I located the office for the interview, spoken with the woman I'd been interviewed by previously, and waited to meet the director.

The interview went fairly well, I thought. I was told I was the final of a few interviews, so I'd know later that afternoon either way.

That afternoon while I was in the grocery store I received the call back from the HR office. Strangest non-hire call ever. They said they liked me, liked my background and wanted to find me a job which would fit me...though they had found someone better suited to that position. He told me to keep applying for seminary jobs and their office would also keep their eyes out for something for me, and if I hadn't heard from them about any in a few weeks, to check with them again.

I guess when the job you interview for is in the human resources department, it is almost like interviewing for a job placement office and instead getting put into their potential outside hires pool?

At any rate, I spent about three hours online saturday morning applying for jobs...child care jobs, administrative assistants, secretary jobs, office assistants, receptionists, etc...I'll check back on those lists in a few days to see if anything new has come up. For today, I'm just waiting.

Home, sweet home

I've missed about a week of updates....so in case you were wondering: our things arrived on schedule, Friday Aug 14th.

I've since then, gotten three out of four rooms set up (bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen)
The bedroom was mostly setup, except that until about two days ago, we still had suitcases all around for our unputaway clothing.
the kitchen was the biggest task...14 or 15 boxes of things and not sure where they'd all go. I'm very pleased with how it turned out...but I don have pictures of the finished product yet.
the living room is the catch-all room for now...and since we haven't gotten a couch or shelves yet...its not a room we'd get very comfortable in right now anyway.

I hope to find a good deal on a couch at a thrift store...but if it gets to be too long waiting on that deal, we might look at buying something new from Ikea or someplace else affordable (any suggestions?)

Monday night....we loaded/packed/crammed as much as we could into our two small cars...remembering to leave room for ourselves and our overnight baggage. We came to realize that more should have gone into the moving cubes than was sent...but it was too late...cant change the past...so we fit whatever we could, and stored the rest at my parents house. (with what we'd previously decided to store, as well.) somehow in spite of leaving things behind...we managed to pack our tent and sleeping bags...which is interesting..considering that in the two years we've been married..and the two years we dated before that...we've never gone camping either together or apart. I think the tent has been used about twice in its lifetime. We owe it a camping trip here in texas, I suppose.

Tuesday morning... found more things to pack and/or leave behind. Crammed more stuff into holes and tiny gaps than michael thought possible. Said goodbyes to my family...and began our drive. I in my car, michael in his car. I carried my music and one lonely houseplant to keep company. Michael had himself and some music. The weather was great most of the day. Clouded up and showered a little beginning in alabama. As we entered mississippi the rains came down fairly hard..but by then we were on slower roads anyhow. I did take a few interesting pictures through the rainy windshield, but those are on my phone and I dont have a way to get those on the computer as of yet. We detoured up to the columbus area to visit family for a day before our move. Had diner with michael's parents and then fell into bed quite sleepy (and ill-adjusted to central time.)

Wednesday morning... was rather laid-back. We went to a local coffee shop for a little while (for a phone interview which I will write about later,) drank lattes, and made facebook updates. Afterward we spent most of the day hopping around looking for people michael grew up with or worked with when he was in caledonia...to tell them “hi” and “bye” before the big move continued. Our last and very important visit was with michaels grandmother. From there, we continued down to brandon (outside of jackson.) the drive to brandon is when I really began taking the random on-road photos. When we arrived in brandon we met up with mark...who joined us for the rest of the trip...and stayed with paula (sis-in-law) and the kids.

Thursday morning... early, though not as early as we maybe should have...greeted by morning coffee: mike, mark, and I loaded into the two cars again. this time with mike and I in one car...mark driving the other. It was nice to have a traveling companion again. Two days of lonely car rides and a houseplant to keep me company was getting to me. On our way, we made a previously arranged stop, though a little later than planned... in rayville, LA to see my friend Deanna, we figured out that it may have been 11 years since we'd seen one another! Far too long...but we caught up a bit over breakfast at McDs. Good times. Still the same two girls..trying our best to do whatever God leads us to....we're both just a little older now. We vowed to meet again on another trip along i-20....now that it will be a regular holiday route for us. Upon leaving mcDs at 10am...mike and I realized that we would be hard-pressed to make it to SWBTS by our 3:30 housing appointment...knowing that the office closes at 4pm...but we pressed on (leaving mark very far behind us in the following car)...and traffic cooperated. I believe it was 3:37 when we sat down to sign lease papers. Praise the Lord! We received our keys, paid our rent, and opened the door of our new home. With the help of a few new neighbors, we unloaded what we had with us and soon decided to treat ourselves to our new favorite restaurant....vallartas mexican seafood. (amazing..amazing...amazing...and right across the street!) (they automatically serve water with lime slices...just the way I always order it!) I couldn't begin to describe how completely at home and happy I felt that night as we finished up our meal in our new city. i also found a grocery store and found my way back home afterward.

Friday morning...we awoke slowly and I began to sort some of our things out. I remembered that we would by now have a mailbox loaded with mail...and also realized that I had no idea where our box would be located. I wandered around our complex and found where our po box should be...but looking at the box labels, couldn't figure out which one would be ours. Our apartment is #204. our parking space is 18-b, and the post office boxes are labeled 1-A through 12-L and 1-M through12-Z.... not 204. not 18. I walked back into our apartment with a very confused look on my face and asked michael to come help me test our keys in all the boxes. Ours turned out to be 11-k. Makes perfect sense.....right? Now we've called uhaul about getting some hand trucks, i've paid a couple of bills, looked through the new Ikea book, and we're waiting to hear from the packing cube company about our delivery. I think my brain is still in eastern time...it feels like lunchtime should already by here..but its not yet 11am.

still to come.... getting our furniture from storage cubes. figuring out where everything goes. replacing bookcases which we didn't move with us. (ikea trip! yay!) possibly finding a couch and a microwave too.

the job hunt has begun

i really want to work on campus....so i can get to know the seminary family and be close to home. i'm not against applying for off-campus jobs, but if i can get something in that area, i'd be really happy. (the campus coffee shop has not posted any job openings as of yet)

i hope it doesn't look over-eager to have just submitted 4 applications to the online job listing at swbts....i figure each one goes to the person in charge of each individual office...so i should cover all the bases. im particularly excited about the conference center event coordinator job...i'm starting to learn that i thrive in that sort of atmosphere. i hope i said enough good things about myself in that application! i applied for a few secretary jobs on campus a few weeks back...but i didn't have a current resume to attach, and i forgot to add more than one past job (because you have to click on a button to get fields fo more than one job history...) here's to waiting!

i'm thinking i'd rather wait till we get to town to apply for off-campus jobs, so i can see how far they are from our home...and see the businesses in person first. i promise i'd be less picky and more "give me anything" if we didn't already have that house-money in our bank account. i like being able to be a little choosy and relaxed about this.

how our house went from "on the market" to "under contract" in less than one week

once we'd found out that we were officially heading for seminary life, we had to begin the daunting task of getting our townhouse ready to sell in a declining economy while we both worked a little over full-time. i will not say that the prospect didn't make me more than a little bit nervous. God will provide.

i spoke to my realtor friend, Delane, to get the ball rolling and figure out exactly what all we needed to do to get our home sell-ready. Delane assured me that our house was in a good neighborhood and that the summer is the best time to try to sell property such as ours..and that on average these things turn over in about 90 days. (the day i spoke with her was exactly 90 days before classes began!) God will provide.

we returned from our seminary visit at the very end of April. i had an appointment to get my wisdom teeth removed the following week...which the dentist decided to do in two sessions...so i had one week of recovery at the start of may, and another at the end of may.
needless to say...i wasn't able to get a whole lot of cleaning out and packing done during the month of May....God will provide.

i hunkered down and got the house into a really good look by mid-june., gave away our cat (she isn't allowed in student apartments)..and listed the house on saturday, june 20th . (remember...we're planning to move to Texas in August and pay for school, rent, etc...without a job in place as of yet) God will provide.

a few days went by without hearing a peep from other realtors to show the place. my prayer through this entire process had been that God would lead the right person to our home at the right time..and no one else who viewed it mattered. God will provide.

on wednesday june 24th i recieved a call that we were getting our first viewing. i had a few minutes before work, so i quickly went home and straightened up a little bit extra, prayed that i wouldn't get discouraged if this wasn't the person for our house, went back to work and waited. God will provide.

when i got off work i recieved a call which confused me. "the realtor who showed your home left a contract on your table for you to look over" i honestly thought delane was telling me that they had lost something in our house and just wanted to be sure we got it back to them....it took a second for the clouds to clear and for me to accept the reality that this first viewer wanted to be the buyer! God will provide.

When i got home, i looked over the contract and just couldn't contain my excitement and disbelief (Lord, help me.) They wanted to pay exactly what we were asking and the only thing which wasn't what i would call perfect, is that they wanted to close the deal in just 4 weeks! Thankfully, it was Wednesday, so i was able to take my excitement to church and get the people of God praying and praising with me. God will provide.

Before the night was over we'd renegotiated the close to 10 days later, which gave us that much longer to get packed and out while working. in the midst of praising God for the provision of our buyer, i began to worry about how we would pay for our moving expenses. in that very moment of worry, i came home to find that Michael's parents had offered to cover our moving truck or whatever we chose to use in our move. we were able to move our things out on the 25th, clean the house the rest of the following week, load our relocubes and send them off....and close on the 31st. God certainly does provide!

we're pretty much nomads for now

i've been thinking of starting this back up....journaling and such....especially with our move on the horizon. i feel like it would be both good for me, and good for those who would read it...to keep in on the things which are going on in the life of myself and michael as we begin our life in Fort Worth.

i posted about this in my facebook notes, but i'm pretty sure it never made it into my blog...so i'll update everyone real quick: After much prayer, in April of this year Mike and I visited Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and began the process of enrolling him in their MDiv program. We feel very much that this is where God is calling us to go for now and will follow Him wherever He leads. Mike was accepted into the program and now we are on our way!

a week and a half ago we loaded everything up, packed most of our belongings into a couple of relocubes, moved out of our townhouse, and into my grandmother's house with whatever wasn't being shipped off ahead of us in the cubes. we've been living out of suitcases ever since.
we have almost another full week to go in this...and it hasn't been so bad..really. i love that it puts us so close to family. grandma's house is next-door to my family's house....so we kind of stay at both places.

since then, we have cleaned out and officially sold our house, donated a lot of things to thrift stores, almost completed our days at each of our jobs, and nearly gotten the items we are storing in mom and dad's attic packed away. we also got this new computer! (a necessity for the seminary student in the family)

(i had a list of all the "last" things i will do this week...but it was kind of depressing..so i took it out)

next tuesday we'll hit i-20 and be on our way. we're actually not scheduled to move into our 520sq ft apartment till that thursday...but we chose to leave a day sooner so we could see Mike's family a little before school begins.

I'm sure if i'd let myself think about it, i would get sad about leaving our friends and family here in the Augusta area...but right now I'm just so ready to be done driving, done unloading our things, and done living out of suitcases without my own kitchen...i want to begin setting up our home and getting to know the community and the area we'll be in for the next several years. it all feels like a great unknown adventure from here...and considering that i know the One who knows the paths this adventure will take us on and He is leading the way...i'm not scared one bit. just very excited to be in it as it all unfolds...