Adventure Update - A Year Later

I cannot believe how fast a year has passed.  Today marks the one year anniversary of when my new adventure started.  The journey has been challenging and yet sweet.  One of the blessings of this new adventure means I don't dread Mondays anymore!  (See above picture.)

If you recall, I decided to begin pursuing a job overseas and almost immediately lost my job of 7 years.  I am still in pursuit of the overseas job.  The company has a long-drawn out process which has been frustrating at times.  There is a method to their lengthy madness and a significant part of that is trying to discover whether applicants are willing to persevere and also digging into their hearts to see if they can adapt well to the stress of a new culture.  I have currently completed 3 out of 5 steps.  One of the things they check for is physical health and trying to resolve issues that could only worsen in the stress of another culture.  I am now impatiently waiting to be medically cleared.  If things continue to move forward at the projected speed, and I continue to gain approval, I could be moving overseas by the tail end of this year.  I will be honest that the delays and waiting make me adapt the attitude that “I won’t believe it till I see it.” or until my feet are on foreign soil with my belongings.  God has used much of this journey to show me scarred areas of my heart, ways in which I do not trust Him, opportunities to practice trusting Him, and areas of weakness to be strengthened.  He also tries to hammer in my skull that my timing His timing is perfect.  

In other news, I began working from home doing freelance architectural drafting.  I have discovered that working from home is not all it’s cracked up to be.  If you have an office job and are wishing you could work from home, it has some struggles.  True, I get to work in my pajamas if I want and I can set my own work hours but there are downsides.  One downside is that as a freelancer, I am not guaranteed a set paycheck.  I also never know when I’ll have work.  Some days I think I’ll have work and I don’t or I’ll finish early.  Other days I expect to have a day off and it seems everyone wants me to work.  A second downside is that it is ridiculously hard to accumulate a good chunk of hours worked.  My extracurricular activities get in the way.  Friends stop by. I have to stop to make lunch and clean the kitchen.  I have to change out laundry loads.  It seems like there were less interruptions at the office and even if there were interruptions, I was paid the same nonetheless.  Speaking of housework, that is another downside.  I have discovered that I can never escape housework or paid work.  When I worked in an office, I could leave all my cleaning chores at home.  From the office, I could not do anything about laundry so it didn’t weigh on me.  Similarly, at 5:00, I left work at the office.  While working from home, I never get away from either and it’s always a battle to figure out which is the priority.  Another downside to freelance work is self-employment taxes.  I learned that as an employee, my employers paid part of my taxes for me.  As self-employed, I have to pay my own taxes.  Lastly, working from home is lonely.  And yes, that last statement was made by an introvert.  Having a roommate that works 12 hour shifts during the day, means there are days that I see nor talk to anyone.  I have to be intentional about making plans with friends so I don’t go insane.  

Over the past year, I have had 6 jobs.  I freelanced for two separate guys doing drafting work.  I finished teaching my art class last spring.  I babysat for a couple months.  I also began driving a van for the local international school.  In addition to all of that, I am currently the assistant coordinator for the international festival at the local university.  If you think it’s a bit chaotic to juggle all of those jobs, I also took 4 seminary classes with a ridiculous amount of reading and this comes from a person who loves to read.  In addition, I began volunteering weekly at the local pregnancy center and started an internship with my church.  This is all in addition to existing extracurricular activities that were ongoing before the job loss.  Through the juggling of all of these things, God has been stretching me to be more flexible and less of a control-freak planner.  

Throughout the past year, God has proven to be a faithful provider in spite of my pitiful trust in Him.  I made more during the first 3 months of 2013 than I did the last 9 months.  My original budget projected that I needed to work 20 hours a week and I only averaged 10.  In spite of all of this, I never missed a meal due to lack of funds.  In fact, most days I ate better than before because I had time to prepare home-cooked, healthy meals.  I was never late on any of my bills.  I paid for 4 seminary classes and still have a bit of money in savings.  In addition, by some strange miracle, I did not pay in quarterly self-employment taxes and yet I miraculously got money back on my return rather than having to pay in.  As I write these words, my finances don’t make sense on paper.  All I can say is that God is a faithful provider and I am thankful.  I still have many moments of doubt but He always provides.  

Additional Adventure Sweetness    

-So many warm days at the park

-Seminary knowledge and time to gain it (even if I didn’t enjoy it at the time)

-Trip to the Creeper Trail with my parents

-Trip to Orlando with my bff

-Extra time with my family

-Language School driving adventures

-Volunteer opportunities

-Gulf Shores Vacation with my family

-Unrushed morning quiet time with Jesus
-Starting the day slowly often

-No need to shower every day

-Overseas travels with my mom (and the money anonymously provided for that trip)

-Extended holiday time with my family

-A chance to get counselor training

-A week in Peoria resting and visiting friends

-My first ever staycation

-Quality time with my dad on a hunting trip

-Extra time with Mashaael before she moved

-Weekday hangouts and travels

-Extra time to hang out with friends who won’t be overseas with me

-Created and sold several art pieces

-Many opportunities to share my passion

-My first ever Ben Rector concert

-Made a new friend, Ashley

-Movies paid for by the Language school

-Ridiculous outpouring of gifts of money or food from friends

-Getting paid to work with internationals
-Learning to embrace weaknesses and the stretching
-Learning to take the weeks with little work as gifts where He leads me by still waters

Adventures as a Chauffeur

Airport Meme, pretty accurate for my first pickup

I arrived at the airport on time but didn’t allow for the amount of time it would take to park the van and walk inside.  I checked the arrivals board and based on the information assumed the flight had not yet arrived.  I decided to take a quick bathroom break.  I then exited the bathroom and found people at the specified baggage carousel waiting to retrieve their bags.  I asked a young woman if she was from the Miami flight.  She nodded and her nod sent me into a frenzy of trying to whip out my sign with the student’s name.  I rushed over to the assigned escalator with my sign in hand.  After the flow of people ceased and I still hadn’t found my guy, I marched back over to the assigned baggage carousel.  “Are you Victor?” I said these words to every guy who looked even remotely like a Spanish speaker.  After a few minutes, and still no Victor, I realized that I had failed my first airport pickup assignment.  My heart sank.  I called my boss to tell her the news that I had lost a non-English speaking student.  With a sigh of relief, I discovered from her that the student had missed his flight but was to take one about 4 hours later.  

My next student was supposed to arrive in another hour and a half so I sat down to wait for his flight to arrive.  Luckily I had brought ample reading material to occupy my time.  I kept checking the arrivals board and discovered his flight had been delayed an hour.  As the arrival time drew nearer, I sat watching the escalator for human movement for 15 minutes before the flight should arrive.  At the first sign of human life, I jumped up with my sign, eager to greet my second student.  I waited and waited and finally made small talk with another driver doing a pickup and asked if he too was waiting on someone from Chicago.  He said he thought everyone from that flight had already came down the escalator.  I walked around the assigned baggage carousel with my sign asking, “Is this you?” to all the Asian males.  I didn’t attempt to butcher the jumbled letters that made up the name of my student.  Eventually everyone got their bags and left the airport and I still did not have a student.  I called my boss again and told her the news hoping she had word that he too had missed his flight.  This was not the case.  I spent the next 90 minutes searching.  I had the guy paged, held my sign as I walked all over baggage claim, went upstairs and downstairs and outside but could not find my guy.  I became frustrated at having been at the airport for 4 hours and still not having a student to show for it.  I later discovered my guy had a friend pick him up without telling my company.

Victor’s second plane was scheduled to arrive at 9pm.  The arrival boards did not have this flight so I asked the Information Desk.  They told me the flight was actually leaving rather than arriving at 9pm and would arrive instead at 10:30pm.  I again pulled out my book and waited.  The flight didn’t actually arrive until 10:50pm.  I readied myself with my sign by the escalator.  You cannot imagine the joy when I saw a young man grinning at me as he came down the escalator.  I told him I was so happy to meet him.  We grabbed his bag and headed home.  I dropped him off at his house, dropped off the van and paperwork and finally made it home at 1:00 in the morning.  

Since that frustrating night, I have made a few more airport runs.  One was incredibly smooth and the student spoke great English so we talked the entire way home allowing me a window into his world.  The next student spoke almost no English.  When I asked if he had a great flight, he turned his head away and was silent since he had no idea what I had said.  My most recent pickup involved misinformation about a flight on the arrivals board and the reality that the flight did not actually arrive until 12:30am.  I didn’t get home from that shift until 3 in the morning after fulfilling my duties as a driver.   

My driving shifts of late have most often been the aforementioned airport pickups or taking the students to the movies.  I enjoy airport pickups because it gives me an hour alone in the car to process, think, pray, or listen to an audio book.  I also really enjoy seeing all the families and couples and friends reunited in the baggage claim area.  It is also rewarding and a relief to lock eyes with the student and to know that the student can rest a little easier knowing someone is there to watch out for them and take them to their new destination.  I also really enjoy the movie trips for obvious reasons.  Who wouldn’t enjoy getting paid to see a movie as well as a free movie ticket.  

I enjoy this job but can also see the hand of God in using the job to stretch me.  I am a planner and get easily frustrated without a plan or when things don’t go according to plan.  This job makes me throw plans out the window and be ok with it.  Just yesterday, I got a text around 9:30am asking if I wanted to take students to the movies that night.  So much for being able to plan ahead.  Then there are the obvious airport delays and missed flights and students having someone else pick them up without telling my company.  Another element that stresses me is having to take all of the students home after the movies.  I usually ask my boss to tell me where each of the students on the sign up sheet live.  The problem is that not every student who signs up actually comes.  Then others don’t sign up but come anyway.  Once we are ready to depart the movie theater, I find out one student has a different ride home and another student who didn’t ride with me now wants a ride home.  To top it off, the students at times have little English and I’m supposed to drive them in a giant van to their homes without a GPS in the dark.  Lucky for me this past year has been one of interrupted plans and chaotic schedules because the old Candace would have ulcers from this job.  What I am discovering is that I can survive without plans and things always work out eventually so I’m learning to not stress.