Settle Down and Get Going | Tyler and Allegra Sanford

Settled In –

Doesn’t it feel good to be settled? After all the chaos of moving, it’s so nice to have a place to call home. Like the Israelites wandering in the desert and longing for a place to settle, we all desire the security of our own abode. It’s a good reminder though that we won’t ever truly find what we’re looking for until we get to our eternal home with our Heavenly Father. (Hebrews 13:14 –For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.)

Even so, we are so thankful for all of your support and prayers regarding the move and ensuing settling-in process. God has given us the grace we needed each step of the way and He deserves the praise. We felt ‘prayed for’ and held, even through the crazy stress of it all.

To catch you up: in our last email we asked for your prayers regarding how to ship our belongings from the capital city. A local businessman was recommended to us and just a couple hours after contacting him our totes had been picked up, wrapped, and loaded into a shipping container to be sent by boat the next day (saving us lots of money and hassle)!

After acquiring our final set of negative tests, we were released from quarantine and proceeded back to the airport to board our last couple flights. Everything went well with our travels that day and we arrived in our new city to the welcome of two of our coworkers.

Over the next few weeks we worked hard at cleaning our house, unpacking our domestic shipment of belongings from our previous town, shopping for furniture and appliances, and meeting new neighbors and coworkers (and of course the usual ballet performances, diaper changes, and laundry hanging;). It was a whirlwind for sure, but we were able borrow our friends’ car (even had AC!) and things just went better and quicker than we expected. What a blessing.

Now Get Going!

We didn’t do all that work to just enjoy living on a tropical island. No, we are here on purpose and have the goal of reaching a high level of cultural understanding and communication ability in the national language. So now we find ourselves attempting to get back into full time language study. We are able to do a lot of review and study from home and have been spending a good amount of time with our neighbors. But the next step is to find people who are willing to spend scheduled and intentional study time with us. Ideally we would each have 4 official Language Sessions with Language Helpers per week. Although it can feel stressful right now, we are confident that God will provide them in His timing.

We are constantly reminded of how dependent we are on God and on His people. We can’t do this alone and God doesn’t want us to. He is leading us even when it doesn’t feel like it. For example, we are writing this update now because we have been forced to slow down by getting sick for the first time here (nothing serious). We would rather be moving forward and finding language helpers but we will wait on Him and rest in His goodness.

John 16:33 – “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”