Robertson Tribe Updates

When the whole “China thing” came up, I went on a quest to gather information about moving, the culture, housing, schooling…anything I could get my hands on to help me navigate these unknown waters. Over and over again, God has brought people into our lives that have been such tremendous resources. Let me share a few examples….

1. We connected with some extended family members that were instrumental in helping us write out the moving package. This is a cousin of hubby’s dad and I’ve no idea what that makes him to us…second cousins, or first cousins once removed, or something equally confusing…who knows?! As “luck” would have it, they retired to an island off the coast of Maine (yes, they are wealthy, ) and were a few hours away. They have lived out of the country for 15 years, and yet, now, they are in our own back yard. Because of their international experience, they answered every question we had, and some we hadn’t thought to ask. Hubby’s company had no precedent for this type of international move as this has never been done before, so we had to create everything on our own and come up with our own terms. We went into negotiations with “all our ducks in a row” thanks to the input from family.
2. Hubby was in HKG on a business trip and through the consultants he was meeting with, he connected with a family of five from TN who live in HKG. They took him to church, out to eat, brought him to their home, showed him around and blew him away with their kindness. I was able to e-mail them with lots of questions before our last trip and got to hug them in person when we were there in April. God’s family is everywhere and are his arms and legs, I am sure of it.
3. When we lived in TX, our senior pastor and his wife felt called to be missionaries. They left that church to serve with OC International. They travel all over the world visiting the missionary families from their organization to encourage them, pray with them, and minister in any way they can. We have supported them for many years and have followed their ministry with joy and thankfulness for all He does through them. We were able to make some contacts in Asia through their contacts in Asia. They have been a great source of encouragement for us as well when so many were saying, “Are you crazy? You don’t really want to go to China, do you?”
4. I participate in an online mom’s message board and have made many friends all over the country (and the world). One lady e-mailed me to say she had been to HKG on a missions trip and she just loved it. She and her husband thought they might even go, but things didn’t work out. She shared things with me what she experienced and that she was praying for me. She contacted me again a few months later to say she had met another lady on another message board () who was a missionary in HKG. She asked if she could pass along my information to her so we could talk via e-mail. I said sure, and ended up chatting with my new friend for a while before we went in April. I got to meet her in HKG!! In fact, hubby and I had dinner with her and her family, she took me to area grocery stores, to the jade market (cool!), the fabric district (amazing!) and to a Mom’s Bible study that meets once a week. She has patiently answered all my questions (and there have been a ton ) and has been a tremendous blessing to me in many ways. I can’t wait to move there and be buddies in real life.
5. After reconnecting with some friends from hubby’s college days, we discovered they have lived overseas in China and have been a source of information as well as encouragement. In the earliest days of all this, we were still in decision making mode and weren’t telling anyone. It was nice to talk with them and get input, as well as encouragement that we were not nuts to be considering this.
6. Another friend from college has taken his family to the mission field and we have been able to connect with them and get some incredible insights from D and his wife A. They have small children and homeschool, have traveled on long plane rides with little ones, have experienced culture shock, have left behind close family….all the things we will experience. They have been a wonderful resource as well and are thrilled to be able to help us, support us and share any information they have about being expatriates.

So many people that we didn’t know, or had not connected with in many years and yet now we have a world-wide family to support us in our journey.
God is amazing!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.