We're already 5 days into June, which means our departure date for New Zealand is FAST approaching!
We've been plugging away the past few months on our jobs (Dani finishes hers this week, Gabe has had more painting jobs offers than he has time to do), and visa paperwork (more about that below), working on building our financial support (more about that below as well), and trying to be actively involved in our community and families here in the beautiful PNW.
Our June schedule is a pretty busy one. Here's what's happening:
Today-Thursday, June 8th: Gabe's in Montana on a very rare chance to reconnect with friends from his first YWAM Discipleship Training School in Panama.
Friday, June 9th: Dani's last day of work AND her little brother and sister graduate high school
Saturday, June 10th: Grad party prep/final hang out with Dani's sister and brother-in-law that live in Seattle.
Sunday, June 11th: Our last confirmed Sunday with our church family (we're meeting at the Roxy building in Longview for a potluck and work party - completely unrelated to our leaving, it just happens to have worked out that way!), Graduation celebration at Coal Creek for Max and Olivia, and then 3-5 Graduation Party at Grandma Sonel's for Max and Olivia (and a convenient final meet-and-greet for us).
Monday, June 12th: pack/catch up day
Tuesday, June 13th-Sunday June 25th: we're traveling to Minnesota, then on to Pittsburgh to photograph a wedding, then up to upstate New York to visit Gabe's sister and her family, then down to Atlanta to photograph another wedding, and then home - hopefully by the end of the service at our church to say our final goodbyes.
Sunday June 25th: tentative date for a final Kirkwood family gathering
Monday, June 26th-Friday, June 30th: purge our stuff, clean our room, reload stuff we're keeping but leaving here in storage in our storage "unit" at Grandma's, pack our bags for the next 18 months, any final purchases stateside, maybe a dentist visit, and final goodbyes to our parents and local siblings.
Saturday, July 1st: early morning flight out of PDX.
So, that's a slow schedule ;)
If you are wanting to see us but haven't been able to, we're pretty low on dinner date availability, unfortunately. Some alternative ideas might be (if you are friends with the Shulke family) to try to see us at Max and Olivia's graduation party Sunday afternoon, or to come by the Roxy theater from 10-11:30 Sunday morning this week, or if you have ties to Coal Creek Church, swing by there from 12-1:30 Sunday afternoon. If those don't work, shoot us an email or text message or FB message Dani, and we'll really try to make something happen! We definitely want to try to connect with as many of you as possible (and soak up being ABLE to connect in person!)! However, we're also try to be reasonable about what is actually possible for us to do.
PRAYER NEED: On a different topic, we would LOVE your prayers regarding our visa paperwork! It is currently in Washington DC - along with our passports - as it goes through the process to get us approved for a 2-year religious workers work visa. This is really the best visa for what we're doing - we're old enough that we can't apply for the 1-year youth-oriented working holiday visa, there's a possibility that being on this visa we would be eligible to receive nationalized health care, which would be awesome, and since we'll need to be coming in and out of the country a few times due to outreaches, it would just be the best in the long run to have this visa and not have to constantly keep to a 90-day limit inside New Zealand.
As it stands now, we need that paperwork and our passports back no later than Friday, June 30th's mail delivery so we can get on the flight July 1st. According to the projected timelines on the embassy website for processing paperwork, our paperwork should finish processing sometime the first week of July. So.... PLEASE be praying for that whole process to be accomplished with incredible speed and efficiency - faster than normal! - for the visa to get approved, and for all of that to just fall smoothly into place. We know God can do stuff like this - he got my passport back to me with time to spare before we left for Thailand, and he made it all work out when we were leaving Thailand with the confusing entry and exit dates and we didn't have to pay an overstay fee, so we're trusting that if the best thing is for us to have that paperwork and passports back, it will come to us. But we'd love your prayers along those lines!
Financial Support Update: As of today, we are 2/3 of the way to our "we think we can survive on this" monthly budget goals! Praise the LORD!!! That amount, in addition to some generous one-time gifts and what we've been able to make, puts us at about 90% of our financial support. Even as I type that, I can hardly fathom how that has worked - God has truly been so faithful to us, and we are SO grateful for each of you who have joined us in this journey of faith... Because it totally is! We know how pledging to support someone for a monthly amount or giving away a one-time chunk of money is an act of faith!
We would still LOVE to have you join us as financial supporters if that's something you've been interested in - one thing we'd really like to be able to do relatively soon after we get to NZ is purchase a used car (which was not in our "survival" budget - we'd need a few hundred dollars more per month to be able to pull it off). Since we're planning to be in NZ for 18 months, we'd really like to be able to get involved in our church and make connections beyond just the base. The base is located out in the country, so there isn't the option of public transportation. Hitching rides to and from town is possible, and we'll do that if we need to initially, but a car would make life a lot more simple.
We also will be adding a family member to our lives sometime between Christmas and the end of January, and we've heard that babies have a way of costing some money! So, our "survival" budget might need to make some changes when we think about adding in costs of a car seat, getting a supply of cloth "nappies," some clothes (fortunately, New Zealand has LOTS of thrift stores!), and covering medical costs of prenatal care and having a baby (if we're not eligible for nationalized health care). This, of course, is a whole new faith journey in our lives which we would love your prayers for as well.
Thanks for checking in and journeying along with us. If you have questions, feel free to shoot us an email or contact us some other way!
- Dani for the Kirkwoods
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