Newsletter, December 2011 - going ... but where?

Bill and Nancy Gross Olathe, KS 66061 29 Nov 2011 (& update 10 Dec) Dear ones:

We have so much to share, and want to bring some news and pictures!  Apologies if you’ve already heard some of this, and apologies for the length, but we just wanted to cover our news!

Over the years, we’ve been encouraged by the talks about ‘stepping over into Macedonia’.  Then a few years ago, we moved to a Spanish congregation as part of a plan to serve where there is greater need in the ministry and in the congregation.  Bill’s Spanish has progressed nicely, though it is still somewhat of a struggle for him since he has still been working full-time and not yet immersed on a daily basis.  My (Nancy’s) Spanish is pretty fluent, since I’ve been able to serve in the full-time ministry for some years and have thus been exposed to both formal and informal conversation!  Plus, last year we were invited to attend a Foreign Language class offered by the branch, a tremendous blessing!  

But we also had our eyes on a next step … serving in a foreign land where there is greater need in the congregation and the ministry.  Meantime, I found an old file folder with letters dated 1972 from a dozen branches in Central and South America, responding to my request for information about foreign service!  So, a life lesson – even if we don’t reach our goals when we’re young, we can still reawaken the dreams later in life! 

Over a year ago, we started putting our master plan to work!  We had some obstacles, though – seemingly overwhelming!  We needed to sell our house in a very bad housing market. It is a 4-bedroom 3-bath house, built six years ago to live near our grandkids.  We had to ask an ex-Bethelite sister to leave the basement apartment where she had been living for two years. And then even before putting it on the market, we had a lifetime of accumulation to clear out – heirlooms from both Bill’s and my family, ‘treasures’ from trips, things from my daughter’s childhood and our own, and detritus of 60+ years of life.  It felt utterly impossible.  Repeatedly, we reminded ourself of our goal – to get EVERYTHING we own down to two suitcases each!  We had seen our friends the Santizos and the Coopers do it before moving to South America … but could we?  Honestly, it felt like our stuff was utterly choking us, drowning us. 

Another question was how to handle my responsibility to care for my mother, Roberta, now 91 years old. When she moved here, her health was such that I really thought she would not survive long. Yet she has lived here now for well over four years, and is in hospice care now (for over a year).  She actually is eager to die – she is so tired of fighting her poor health – yet she keeps bouncing back.  So I had conversations with my sister and brother, and found that each of them is willing to bring Mom closer.  We haven’t yet told Mom, but it sounds like she will have a new home in the coming months.

We also needed to decide how to handle Bill’s retirement. We needed his job for the insurance, since I was laid off three years ago.  When we move, we can get insurance locally – but what do we do until then? 

I need to thank a couple of dear sisters who came to help quite a lot – Andy and Margie. They were both very encouraging, real cheerleaders and hard workers! They never made me feel ashamed for having accumulated so much stuff.  Having someone to help was such a motivator, getting me ‘unstuck’!  There were other friends too who helped clean or encourage.  It was a reminder – first, to ASK for help, and second, who can I help, in turn?  Is there someone else, silent and stuck, that I might go help? 

We had garage sales.  We gave things away to friends. I took 15 boxes of books (with about 50 books per box) to a book reseller.  We sold bigger items on Craigslist.  We donated to Goodwill.  We worked on the house, and took care of deferred maintenance and painted the entire inside and some outside. Over and over, more and more, over and over.  The work seemed endless – but in retrospect, there WAS an end, and the effort was so worth it! Each box of things (or, trashbags) leaving the house was so liberating!

In the middle of all this effort, in January 2011, we took a 17-day trip to Peru and Bolivia (on the cheap – staying with friends). We needed to ‘spy out the land’.  We loved seeing all the friends, but especially fell in love with a mountain village, Tarata, and the congregation, especially the Mitchell family.  It overlooks the Andes mountains and the Inca Trail and the terraced hillsides. We learned it was VERY economical to move there, stretching our retirement dollars. We also spent time in Tacna, at the southern tip of Peru in the desert, with some old friends and now-missionaries, Todd and Melinda Murphy, and others. It was SUCH an encouragement to visit and help us decide.  It gave us incentive to not give up our efforts! 

After a few months of preparation, the house went on the market … and then had almost no showings for a couple of months.  We prayed, we begged for Jehovah’s help, since every penny of equity we could squeeze out would go to our goals. But eventually we got the message to lower the price, and we did so a few times.  Finally we got a few showings… and we say that Jehovah sold our house!  Let me tell you how. 

One Friday evening we got a call to show the house… in just a few minutes!  We scurried around with some touchups, and left for a while. Before long, we got a call from the realtor, saying that the couple had actually been about to make an offer (that very afternoon) on a different house, when they saw our house and wanted to tour it.  Afterward, they immediately made an offer on OUR house!  This was only our sixth showing – a realtor said we were “extremely lucky”!  No, we just had some extra help from our loving God!  Of course, we also were willing to take a large loss on the house, but it gave us enough to cover our debts and buy us a ticket to Peru, so we are content.  We close on December 9^th.

Since getting a contract to sell the house, we are now doing another wave of purging so that we can fit into an apartment! We need to stay around Kansas City for a few more months, since my mother is still here. This next step-down (in size, NOT in quality of life!) to an apartment will be a good transition to continue shrinking our footprint to those ‘two suitcases’. Anyway, we are purging further and have set up a ‘free sale’ in our living room for the friends to come take some of our extras.  (Since this photo, I’m added much MORE!)

Recently Bill wrote a letter to the Peru branch (via our body of elders) to inquire about moving there, and we are toying with the idea of Guatemala or Nicaragua. It’s thrilling – yet another step closer!  We’ll start working on research of visas (if needed) and any legal matters, banking, etc.

The picture of Sarah in a recent Watchtower study was a tremendous encouragement. (I framed it to continue to look at it daily!) I saw the strong stone house with indoor water and the pile of lovely things she was leaving behind. I wondered, which of those treasures were given her by her own mother or grandmother? Was anything from Abraham’s family – even from Noah or Shem? Yet, Sarah made those difficult decisions, even without being familiar with where she was going, and surely knowing that it would be a very different, and very difficult, life.  What an shining example – and a wonderfully encouraging illustration to help us accomplish what we needed to!

Also, we have our kids (Kelly and Lori) and grandkids (Kelse and Tiffany) with us for a couple of weeks. They also just sold their house, but their apartment is not yet ready, so they are here until we close on our house.  It’s delightful to have kids to hug in the mornings & evenings, and to see their folks doing well, and they will move into an apartment in our building!  They just moved to a neighboring congregation where there was a need for more servants, a good example of ‘stepping over to Macedonia’, even if it’s nearby!

So that’s where we are at this moment, more purging, packing, then a move in a couple of days.  But whatever lies ahead, the effort and emotional stress, is so totally WORTH IT as we contemplate the rich life we are headed to. We are now 66 and 61 years old, and have a limited amount of time remaining which we can use to have such a rich adventure and the privilege of serving elsewhere. We didn’t want to wait one day too long.  We read experiences in the yearbooks, and we wanted those types of experiences too!

I’ll admit that every now and then I look around and gasp for a moment, ‘What are we DOING?”.  Then I breathe, and think of the privileges we are enjoying now and in the future, and the prospect of the joy of helping people who have never heard God’s personal name Jehovah, nor have they heard the Bible’s hope of God’s kingdom to rule earthwide replacing corrupt governments, even bringing perfect health and eternal life on earth. We think of the pleasure of immersing ourselves in a new a simpler culture, and having a healthier lifestyle with lots of walking and healthier foods. I think of the adventure we will enjoy, and the beauty of the life we have ahead of us. I think of the friends we have made and the many more we will make, and the lives we will yet touch. Is this a sacrifice, leaving a house and security and possessions?  No, not a sacrifice at all.  We are setting sail on the greatest adventure of our lives, and hope we can be used fully by Jehovah for the rest of our days.

With Christian love,

Bill and Nancy

Update Dec 10 – We are now in our apartment and delighted!  Lots less stress, more joy!  And we keep looking around to see what MORE we can get rid of, to fit into our two suitcases each in June!