Up, down, up, down, up, down . . . I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round heading nowhere. Josh got the official offer/salary package last night and he texted me that it looked good and the numbers were around what we said we needed. Time to celebrate, right? Since housing leases here are contracted by the year, with full payment in advance, he sent an email to confirm that the amount they allocated to housing could be paid up-front.
This morning he got an email reply with. “No, sorry. We don’t do that.” And as to his further inquiry about temporary housing while we wait for our visas to be processed (since we can’t rent a place until we are legal residents), he got a short, “There are no relocation costs associated with this contract” reply. Um, that’s not going to work.
It seems insane that a company would go through all the work of hiring someone to work overseas and not take into account the necessary expenses to get that person and/or family there. We have decided that we are both unable and unwilling to fund those expenses ourselves since it’s as much about the principle as it is about the money.
It’s possible (and even likely) that since they don’t have other overseas hires in this department that HR is completely uninformed and when Josh’s future boss gets involved, that she’ll be able to turn it around. But if not, we’re willing to walk away and start the job search over again at square one. 
As if we weren’t stressed enough with all of this going on, the UAE government waited until Monday mid-day to announce that they were going to call a holiday on Thursday and then it took another day for the embassy to decide that they were going to be closed so we had to shift Josh’s retirement ceremony at the last minute to tomorrow. I was hoping that we’d be able to celebrate the ending of this career with the added bonus of having the next one lined up, but we’ll continue to trust that God has something in mind that we can’t understand right now.
One of the reasons that I do have peace in spite of all this uncertainty is because of how we’ve seen God work in the past. If you’ve been reading my blog from the beginning you remember all of my posts anticipating our move to Egypt, all the preparation, the early days of exploring, and then– our sudden evacuation after only 2 months. Our car hadn’t even arrived yet. I could not understand why we had spent 3 years preparing and planning and doing language training to have it taken away. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t seem fair, and I didn’t see how God could make anything better out of it.
And yet, he did. Over and over again these past 7 years I have noted to myself, “If we had stayed in Egypt you wouldn’t be here right now.” I keep reminding myself that out of something terrible came all this good. Being evacuated set off a string of fortunate events (though I didn’t see them all as fortunate at that time) that led to connections in Oman and Bahrain that have kept our Middle Eastern adventure continuing long past the 12 months that we were promised. I thought it was leading us to a career here after Josh’s retirement. But maybe not. If it ends now, I’ll be sad, but confident that better things are on their way.
Robin, you are a remarkable woman. Your ability to rest in God’s timing is amazing. It would be hard enough if you were just staying there for the next three months but you are leaving the country. Kind of leaving your belongs so you can (hopefully) follow the path of rugs back to where you believe God wants you to be. Following this with you via your posts always has me shaking my head. I’ll compulsively be checking until the final answer is know or a new path opens up.
I admire both you and Josh and send my prayers and love,
Thank you Jan. You’re so encouraging. I’m thankful that I’ve had God’s peace throughout this process. All the unknowns of military life have been excellent practice for this phase of life!