It’s Out of Our Hands

Transferring from the moving truck to the container shipment.

Literally, our stuff is no longer in our possession.

I had the unique pleasure of driving halfway across our great country last week (almost straight through tropical storm Debby), delivering all of our stuff to the shipping company in Ft. Lauderdale. What an experience!!

Unfamiliar Grounds

If you’ve never seen an actual shipping yard, they’re very impressive, very chaotic, and very intimidating. When I rolled up in the Uhaul, I couldn’t make sense of anything. Everything was moving so fast, and in such chaotic harmony, it took me 15 minutes just to find a suitable parking spot.

Luckily, with the help of Rudy (the shipping yard foreman and my new best friend, lol) I was able to make sense of the chaos and put everything in its place.

I dropped off the car before the close of the day on Tuesday evening, then returned bright and early Wednesday morning to begin unloading and reloading all of our stuff. Luckily, a crew of five guys helped me to knock out the transfer in only a couple of hours. Such an answered prayer!

All Boxed Up and Nowhere to Shower

I can't believe it all fit in one 20-foot container

We finished moving everything from the 26′ Uhaul to the 20′ container (still don’t know how it all fit) at about 2:30pm. I was pretty stinky and sweaty, and I had a flight to catch at 5:55pm.

And just in case you’re wondering . . . no, the hotel you stayed in the night before won’t let you back into your room to shower if you’ve already checked out.

Solution: I doused myself with enough Old Spice deodorant body spray to kill a moose and bought a “property of Ft. Lauderdale” souvenir t-shirt for the flight. Success!

And Now We Wait

As I write this post, our stuff is probably still sitting at the shipping facility waiting to pass customs paperwork. If all goes well, everything will be on the boat headed for Eleuthera on July 10.

When we arrive on the island next Saturday July 14, the hope is that the container will be there waiting for us – maybe. We’ll claim everything at customs, pay the heavy import taxes, and have the container delivered to our house.

Not only are we praying for everything to go smoothly, we are asking God to prepare us for the unforeseen problems that could easily arise. I think, in Eleuthera, we will truly begin to understand the depth of what Paul meant when he wrote Philippians 4:10-13.