In Honduras

The girls and I made a paper chain to count down the number of days until we leave for Oregon.

There’s a whole lot that has to happen before we leave, so the chain is a reminder to me of the number of days we have left to get a whole lot done.

We have spent a lot of our three years here organizing and cleaning up the office, literally and figuratively. We are content with the current state of things, overall, and heck, there’s a lovely newly remodeled office for whoever steps into the office next.

At this point, no replacements will be here before we leave, so we won’t have an opportunity to train or orient the next Reps. This means we need to leave things in good order, write out a Transition Manual and try to do everything we can to leave things ready to be picked up down the road.

So that’s what our next few weeks will be filled with.

After Rep meetings.

We’re currently in Honduras, with Country Representatives from the rest of Latin America and Haiti. It’s a bit surreal to be here, participating and at the same time planning for our departure in just one short month (We’ve booked our tickets: we fly home July 3^rd). These counterparts, these other Reps, are literally the only other people in the world who have a clue what being a Rep is like, what our days and weeks look like, how stressful it can be and has been. We will miss their support and camaraderie. The end of this time together will be some of our more difficult goodbyes in this process.

On another note, I’m feeling so thankful that we have an apartment in Oregon. We E-signed the lease on Saturday. I couldn’t help but marvel that I was in a large van, driving near the border of Honduras in rural Guatemala, and there I was using Michael’s cell phone as a Hotspot to emit wifi so that I could connect my computer to the internet and pay our deposit on our apartment, AND sign the lease via some secure electronic signature. That is technology at its finest.

Ellie is enrolled in Kindergarten in a Dual-Immersion program at the school we wanted, and we found an apartment in the same school zone. Those were two of the biggest details I have been worried about over the last weeks, and my stress level has gone down immensely since these two things have been secured.

We have no car, no furniture, a heck of a lot to do here, 8 suitcases to pack, but I’m feeling at peace. Those things will fall into place.