Mid-April I got a call from a man asking for Captain Eckert. My heart dropped to the floor. I knew this was not good news. It was a man asking if Andy had received the notification that he was being recalled for active duty with the Marine Corps. I told him we had not received the letter and to call Andy to discuss this issue further. I was in no mood to be asked anymore questions. Andy called back in a few minutes and told me the news. He had a muster on June 2 and there they would give him orders to report 5 months from then to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan for 12 months.
This was absolutely the last thing that we thought our future held. We had felt the Lord leading us to move back east more and more and within the weeks prior to the news Andy had been applying for jobs in the Charlottesville, VA area. We have attempted the groundwork for a move to head east a few times, but the Lord had never allowed such a move. We truly felt like this time it was the Lord who was leading. But, now what? Were we totally off base? We didn't think so one bit. The Lord had confirmed it in our hearts that he was preparing the way for us, and now it was time to go.
But, now we had an enormous roadblock. Not only could we not focus our attention on job applications and house hunting, we had to face the fact that just around the corner our family would be separated for an entire YEAR. So far from what we saw the future holding.
Andy has a contract of 3 1/2 years active duty and 4 1/2 years reserve time. He had just pasted his one year mark in the reserves in February. They can not recall you for active duty when you are in your first year of reserves and they cannot call you up when you are in your last year of the reserves. They called him up after 13 1/2 months! We don't have any friends that this has happened to, so we were clueless as to what to do, and where to go from here. Did we have options, or did he just have to go?
As time went on we started to find some alternative ways to avoid him deploying. He had to get another job in the reserves that would satisfy them enough so that they would allow him to do this alternative job instead of going. But, he had to find one quick. It had to be found, applied for, accepted all before this muster on June 2.
Time was not on our side.
While doing his research, Andy found a particular job that would allow him to finish up his reserve time here in the states and not have to deploy! There were plenty of jobs across the country so he contacted the persons in charge for the ones in Virginia. There were 3 openings in Virginia. He interviewed for the position and was offered the one in Roanoke, Virginia. This would allow us to live in Charlottesville and Andy would only have to commute 2 hours once a month. This seemed perfect. But, God had even a better situation in mind. The point of contact emailed Andy back and said that he had changed his mind, he was going to put him in the Lynchburg, VA position instead. This job is even closer to Charlottesville! It took a few weeks for everything to go through officially, but now we are on the other side of that mess. The sergeant that Andy was going through to help him out with this process said he had never seen an application go through so fast and that he was very lucky because he's heard that they are trying to not let this particular job be an option anymore for people to get as an alternative to deploying, since there is no chance of deploying! God was in every detail!!!
It went from thinking he had no way out of going, to now having a job in VA that would secure that he stays stateside for the remainder of his contract. Plus, now we have extra income as well from this job. And we just realized we can now have military health insurance coverage again as well. A huge blessing! Charlottesville is not a cheap town to live in so this will allow us to live close the the University of Virginia comfortably.
Andy's last day of work in Indiana is June 6. And if all goes well, the next week he will spend it in Kansas City, MO for a week of training with the USMC Reserves, and then the week after that he will be in Lynchburg, VA for another week of training. There are still a few unresolved issues about his week of training in MO, so please pray that he is allowed to go that week. We are discussing the option of me and the boys driving down there to Virginia with him so that we can start moving into our house.
A house?
Oh yes, the Lord provided an adorable house to rent!!! What seemed like the impossible, we found an affordable house close the the University of Virginia. This is practically unheard of this time of year, considering it's so close to when the students are leaving to go home for the summer and have already secured their homes for the next school year. Pretty much all of the decent houses and most of the not so decent places have already been taken. In our searching there was not much to choose from at all, but this house miraculously was available. The landlord said a few weeks ago the current tenants contacted him and said they were moving, totally unexpected. So he had to put it up on the market. He is faxing us the lease tomorrow so we can look it over, but if all goes well, it's ours!
We were originally thinking I would be looking for housing the week Andy was working in Lynchburg, but God had an even better plan! We are going to sign to start the lease on the 15th and by the end of June we will be residents of the town of Charlottesville.
Now.. why Charlottesville?
Andy went to school there and I went to school in Richmond, an hour away. We absolutely love Charlottesville. We spent as much time there as we possibly could. Since leaving we have always wanted to go back. It is a perfect location from SO many of our family and friends. And it is an absolutely perfect location for a million outdoor opportunities that we love. These are all sidenotes though.
Most importantly since attending UVA the Lord has continued to grow in Andy a desire to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the students there. He came into a personal relationship with Christ as a student and has seen both sides of how to live life, with and without Jesus as the center. He wants so desperately to share that gift of eternal life with the kids there. There are several Christian fellowships active on the campus and he intends on getting involved with a few of them and possibly interning with one next year and possibly being on staff with one of them.
That is our intent as of right now, but we all know, life changes. And what we thought the Lord was bringing us there to do, might not be. Kinda like our move to Indiana.
We moved to Indiana right after Andy got out of active duty in NC. We didn't know what exactly he should do as a job, all we knew was that we wanted to get away from the Marine Corps, far far away. It's not that we hated it, but after 2 deployments overseas and him missing the first 20 weeks of Samuel's life, he wanted nothing to do with an organization that would take him away from his family for so long. We moved to Indiana with all intentions of only staying here for 3 months. He always loved log homes and decided to take a course to learn how to build them. We thought it might possibly lead to him wanting to go into this profession, but after the course he realized that he loved the art, but did not want to pursue it as a career.
We were kind of at a loss. We knew we shouldn't just move somewhere just for the sake of moving, because we did not feel God directing us anywhere else but where we were. Andy got a job doing carpentry and we decided we would just sit tight here for as long as God wanted us to. The carpentry job was great. He learned a lot of skills and really enjoyed himself, but he missed working with people. He is a huge people person and he knew he wasn't using all of his talents doing carpentry. We found a job as a career counselor that seemed so up his alley. And after 6 months later, it really truly is. He loves it. He is so good at what he does. He has truly found a place where he is using the gifts that God has given him to benefit others.
I write all of this for one thing... Well, I guess two, to inform you, but also to share that there is a career counselor job available that we just found online right at the University of Virginia. This job seems like it is the perfect job for him. It says a master's degree is required, which he does not have, but he of course applied anyways. Please join us in prayer that the people reviewing his application will choose to interview him and then eventually hire him, despite a lack of a master's.
It seems like this strange move to Indiana and us being here for a year is starting to make more and more sense the more we see things unfold. Andy was able to get a career counselor position here in Indiana with little experience in the field. We know that was no mistake on God's part. He now has some background to apply for this job at UVA and coming out of the Marine Corps, he probably wouldn't have ever had a chance at getting the job, much less the realization of how much he would have loved doing it.
We can start to see how God's master plan is unfolding little by little. It's an amazing experience to see God working things out even better than what we could have ever imagined.
If Andy doesn't get this job, it will be alright. We will be disappointed, but we know it's for a reason. But, bottom line, this job or not, he needs a job. It is the last piece of the puzzle for our relocation. A big piece, yes I know, but we are confident that this is where we are being called, so we are confident, he will also provide a job. Until he gets a job he can work in Lynchburg in his Reserve job. There's a ton of flexibility with that job allowing him to work more than once a month if he desires.
I realize this was not a short version to say the least, but just be glad I didn't give you all the long version! Sorry to keep most of you out of the loop on all of this, but it was a tough situation and things were changing literally by the hour some weeks so it would have been hard to keep everyone up to date.
To say the very least we are thrilled that this move to Charlottesville is in fact in God's plan and that this reactivation threat only allowed him to move us there much quicker than we had even imagined moving. We could not be more excited about what God has in store.
Please keep Andy's job situation and our packing and settling in process in your prayers. Packing and moving with 2 babies under 2 sounds like quite a challenge to me. I can't say I'm looking forward to it! But, I sure am looking forward to being on the other side of this move!
