Freedom

It’s gone. The truck with our household goods we are shipping to Africa pulled out of our driveway about noon today. After the truck pulled around the corner and disappeared out of sight, Josh threw his hands in the air and proclaimed, “FREEDOM!” And then we just stood there for a couple of minutes to gather in all the rest of the junk we have to get done. We are just so tired. The scramble the last two weeks to prep for the movers has our energy levels totally tapped out. Trying to prep a house for 6 different packing categories while still living in it with 5 little boys is a serious challenge: training in VA in the winter, Language training in Kenya in the winter, Tanzania before our shipping container arrives (HOT weather!) are the three suitcase categories we have, and then a household shipment to go to Tanzania, a long term storage trailer to stay here, and a ever growing “get rid of it!” pile. Goodness it’s a lot of work. So, the shipment is done. Our chore for the remainder of this week, before we fly to VA training early on Monday, is to get the house emptied out and clean, strategically pack all our luggage and figure out what of it needs to go to VA training with us and what needs to stay here until we come back for one week in March before flying to Kenya. We learned today that the many many MANY pounds of green coffee beans we bought to roast are not allowed to be shipped, so…..we are adding 3 extra suitcases to our entourage to house the beans safely and we’ll just pray that customs is ok with our answer to their question about what they are for, “for roasting”. Ironically, we cannot acquire good coffee beans in Africa because all the good ones are exported, so buying imported beans here in the states and taking them with us is the option we are left with. We’ve been doing test roasting for months and found some favorites and bulk ordered them. Anyway, we worked through this afternoon and hope for a good night sleep and energy for tomorrow, and then following days.