What was God Thinking? (part 2)

Hey there! Welcome back. Well, to continue this story, first I need to backtrack a little. Before all this happened, God had already told me a change was coming. He impressed upon me he had plans for a move, but I thought he meant to another church. At the time I was serving as a Stephen Minister, and I just figured God wanted to bring this ministry to another church. I guess I wasn't thinking big enough. Nor had I made a connection yet to what was going on.

So, back to the phone call. My husband (Mike) and I talked, and agreed it wouldn't hurt to look into it. These kind of things take time due to the waiting periods for work visa approvals. Yes, we'd be willing to go over. Mike sent his lastest CV and we did what you can imagine.

Wait.

Then another call came. Sun Microsystems, Switzerland, had implemented a hiring freeze. Okay. There was our answer, at least that's what I thought at the time. Everything went quiet for a while. Toward the end of the summer, the phone rang again. The freeze was still on, but they really needed Mike's expertise. Could he work through an independent company as a consultant?

Sure! They went back to the proverbial drawing board and developed a plan with an outside company to hire Mike as a consultant, who Sun could hire as an independent contractor. That was no problems for us. We were already accustomed to the independent contractor/consultant life.

Then they called back. Could he come to Zürich for an inteview? Definitely! And can he bring his wife, so she can look around with an eye for living there? Oh, yeah! I'm there. Could we get there by the end of next week? Gulp…sure.

Only one thing. We had no passports. I had less than a week to get something that normally takes six. I went to a friends to cry. Oh well…nothing I could do about it. My friend picked up the phone and dialed our senator. "It's an election year, and he wants your vote."

Wow! She has guts, I thought. I got on the phone and answered some questions. Yes, this was an employment opportunity. Yes, we would lose it if we couldn't go next week. No, my husband had no other contracts lined up as of yet. My mind reeled. This seemed like a spool of redtape larger than the one we already faced, but then it was done. With an offer. We could Fed Ex our paper work to the senator's people and they would walk it personally into the main post office in Washington themselves, or they could fax an Act of Congress, done on our behalf, to take to the nearst state postal office that was set up to produce passports.

Again, wow! An Act of Congress? (I still have a copy of this thing.) Mike wanted to keep control since we were down to the wire. We'd make the five hour drive to New Orleans (from Memphis) and do it ourselves.

Off we went on our fun little road trip. Kids were with Mom. Papers in hand, including our Act of Congress. As we got closer, we noticed a storm had come through the area, but not worries, we could manage. Got off the right exit and came to a stop. It wasn't just a storm but a hurricane. And the city was under two feet of water.