Blog

WE DON’T DO THIS ALONE

Leave a comment

There are MANY TIMES when we are filled with gratitude at the support we have received in this work. Not only does the financial support to Safe Haven allow us to do this work, but your physical help at times makes things happen that we just couldn’t do on our own! Here’s just one example of why we need a village to do this work here.

PAPERWORK SAGA OVERSEAS

We have been in the process over the last couple of months in doing our annual homestudy update for our adoption. Part of that process included Indiana needing our updated fingerprints. In Indiana (one year ago) we were able to simply go into a local office for quick electronic fingerprints that were soon sent from their office to the police and our homestudy provider. It was a smooth, easy even, and took place during a matter of days.

This year, because we are living abroad and unable to go to that local office, it look a total of 13 extra people / groups, EACH ONE of whom provided a critical piece of the puzzle to make it possible for us to document our fingerprints and provide them for the Indiana State system, a process that took over a two months.

Continue reading “WE DON’T DO THIS ALONE” →

Preparing for Success

Leave a comment

Nick originally wrote this article for our Counseling Center with expats in mind. We hope it can be a great resource for many of you as well!

by Nick, LMHC

Attention is costly

The primary mechanism of our computer’s ability to multitask is something called “context switching.” Essentially, the processing unit saves a task off to memory in a way that it can later retrieve and then shifts over to another task. Each context switch comes with a performance cost though, if only because the act of switching is another action that costs energy.

Just like the computer, shifting our attention, even to something positive, does take a little more energy every time it happens and when it’s happening a lot, we can find ourselves struggling more and more to maintain our attention.

Continue reading “Preparing for Success” →

REFLECTIONS

Leave a comment

We’ve been living in a new country for 7 months now! As we consider the life decisions that have landed us on the other side of the world, and how we’re doing amidst them, we’re overwhelmed mostly with gratitude. Our timing was interesting… I mean, nobody planned for us to be moving abroad amidst a pandemic. Or trying to learn a new language with masks and restrictions and lockdowns getting in the way. Or for one of our parents to get diagnosed with cancer. But we have been consistently surprised by blessing along the way and despite the unique challenges of this season, we are on our feet. So here are a few reflections 7 months in:

Continue reading “REFLECTIONS” →

What did you say?

1 Comment

That’s probably a constant refrain in our minds these last few weeks. Mid-November, we jumped into a language immersion program, which means we’ve been living with a national family in a small flat in a city 2x the size of NYC. The goal? Get lots of conversations/listening all in our new language (read very, very little English.) Secondary goals were to learn more about daily life here and explore this city (which will be helpful for future travel for work!) And though we’re definitely not catching the entirety of every conversation, we’re listening. We’re slowly learning and trying out new words, sentences, grammar structures.

Continue reading “What did you say?” →

BIG MONTH OF NEWS

2 Comments

We’ve got a month of big updates to share!

LANGUAGE STUDY:

We are in full time language study right now with a private tutor since the language school in our city is currently closed due to COVID. Recently, we found out about an immersion program in another city where we will live with a national family for a couple months. This includes: 

  • 4 hrs of language study each day 
  • Live with a local family and get lots of language time and cultural training
  • Learn how to navigate this new city (which will be really helpful as Nick will likely end up coming back for crisis counseling sessions)
Continue reading “BIG MONTH OF NEWS” →

WHY HERE?

Leave a comment

Just popping over here to say if you don’t get our monthly emails, you might have missed our latest video giving you a walking tour of our city.

WHY ARE WE IN THIS CITY SPECIFICALLY?

Great question 🙂 This location was picked VERY SPECIFICALLY by those where dreaming about an international counseling center for workers in this part of the world. They were looking for a place that:

Continue reading “WHY HERE?” →

GRATEFUL FIRST STEPS

Leave a comment

We arrived August 30 in our new country and dove right in. Honestly, things have mostly gone much smoother than we anticipated! We have an apartment that is restful and will give us space to share with others living in this city and visitors who come. We are in the process of going to lots of little government offices, stocking an apartment with furniture and all the things you need to live and just started back (a little) to language.

Continue reading “GRATEFUL FIRST STEPS” →