Home, Yes I am Home. Home is Wherever I'm with You.

Yeah, we live here.

I've always liked foreshadowing. Whether in a book or movie, I always get excited when I recognize it. But foreshadowing doesn't usually happen in real life. So when it does, I get really excited.

In the spring semester of 2007 Ryan was a student at Trinity Western University's Laurentian Leadership Centre (LLC) in Ottawa, Ontario. Ryan lived in a mansion in downtown Ottawa with the other students and, since TWU is so big on community, a Community Life Coordinator (CLC, essentially a dorm parent but for independent 3rd and 4th year university students). During his time at the LLC Ryan thought he would enjoy the CLC position. And he really enjoyed Ottawa. When I came out for a visit over spring break I felt I could live there.

Fast forward to January 2011. At the time we were thinking about what we would do after we left Hungary and nothing was coming together and we had very little idea of what we wanted to do anyway. Audrey was born and our good friend Christie Esau is the secretary at the LLC and one of her duties is to put together alumni updates and she asked if she could announce Audrey's birth. Sure. When the newsletter came out Ryan saw that the CLC position would be available for the next school year. Hmm...

He got his application in on the day the job opened and we waited. And waited. And waited. And after three and a half months we gave up hope. We knew that Canadian immigration law dictated that any qualified Canadian be hired before any non-citizen. So we assumed a qualified Canadian had been found and we would return to Oregon for an indefinite amount of time. We worked really hard to come to terms with the idea of returning to The Dalles to no jobs and my parent's basement.

And then one night in mid-June I got a message from Christie that said "I can't say much, but don't give up hope". Oh boy. As soon as Ryan got home from football practice he sent an email to the director and thirteen minutes later he got a response that said all the qualified Canadians had dropped out for various reasons and they happily could come back to him as a candidate. Woohoo! A few days later he had an interview with HR and then a week after that an interview with the director, at the end of which he was offered the job! That was our last evening in Gyula. It was surreal as we said goodbye to the town we had lived in and loved for two and a half years and were excited about our newly-found future in Canada. But it felt good to know we were going somewhere. We were doing something. And it was what we wanted.

So here we are in Ottawa, living in a historical mansion with 15 students. We're eight blocks from the Canadian Parliament and in the heart of the city. It's obvious that God prepared us for this and paved the way. We look forward to what he has for us while we are here and how he might be foreshadowing what is next.