Moving Month Mayhem

After twenty years in Bali, Indonesia, a move is in the works. Rachel and I will be flying back to the USA on August 11th...not just for a visit this time, but to live for the foreseeable future. Bit by bit, our home is being dismantled...and a certain amount of mayhem is inevitable.

All our major furnishings have found a home with various friends in Bali and the neighboring island. Thankfully, the friends who have purchased the most-essential items are willing to wait until closer to our departure before claiming them. Otherwise, we would be living in a pretty depressingly empty house.

As it is, with our books being packed, our home is looking somewhat forlorn. In exchange, we have a garage full of boxes.

Our closets have been sorted through and things that haven't been used in a long time are slated for give-away or sale. We will have a "garage sale this Saturday morning. "Garage sale" is in quotation marks because it will actually be held on the front porch of my international church. I live too far away from most of the rest of my friends to expect them to drive out to my house. Boxes for that purpose are stacked in a different room.

A few days ago, I got some help bringing a desk and a large bamboo bookcase down from an upstairs room. The stairs were too narrow to move those items, so they were lowered over the balcony...exactly the opposite procedure used two years ago when we moved in. (The move-in process resembled reeling in a fish.)

This morning, my bookcases and another piece of bamboo furniture got moved out. The same truck took a large portion of the for-sale items into town ready for the "garage sale". Getting loaded up was a challenge because it rained hard and long just exactly at the time we needed to load up. It took awhile, but at long last, that job was done.

The cargo company I have hired to move the stuff I am sending back to the States will come on Tuesday morning...in about twelve hours, in fact. Once we are past the garage sale , the majority of the packing up will be done with two weeks to spare.

I think I have had more visitors drop in this past week alone than I have had in the past two years. All are wanting to catch up before we leave. This will only increase over the next few weeks as we wrap up our life here. This, of course, is the hardest part about moving.

In the meantime, Rachel and I both are riding a roller-coaster of feelings about this move. We alternately look forward to this new stage of our life, and grieve what we will be leaving behind.

I find myself getting teary-eyed at random moments as I say good-bye to friends, places, and even activities that have been a common part of my life life.

Rachel's roller-coaster shows up in different ways. A couple nights ago, I picked her up from a friend's house. She wanted to buy some roasted corn from a vendor in the park, but as we already had food at home, I said no. She had a bit of a melt-down which thankfully didn't last very long. Interestingly, she recognized that she was partly upset about not getting the corn, and partly about missing her friends. I understood.

We'd certainly appreciate your prayers for us as we make this transition.