Back HOME in Louisiana

 

Debbie and I call Louisiana HOME again, after over 30 years away.

This transition was a few years in the making but got started in earnest just over a year ago.

For several years I have not been happy in my work. I even tried to figure out for a while what else I could do for a living. In the late summer of 2019, I was very unhappy with work and started looking for another job. We had talked about relocating and I looked around the south, but really hoped to find something in south Louisiana. I had looked near Jackson, but really never found anything promising.

I had good phone interviews with two companies in Louisiana. Both wanted to do a face-to-face interview and I scheduled them both for the day after Labor Day 2019, Baton Rouge in the morning and New Orleans in the afternoon.  I went to my morning interview in Baton Rouge and it went VERY well. They offered me a job and I told them I wanted 24 hours to think about it. I loved the company and the people and the offer. I went to get some lunch and sit and pray. As much as I liked everything about the offer I had received, I felt very strongly that God was leading me to turn it down. My impression was basically, "It’s not time."

I contacted the company in New Orleans and told them that I needed to cancel my afternoon interview. I told them that it just wasn’t the right time for me to make a move. They tried talking me out of it, but I held firm and started for home in Jackson. While on the way, I called the company that offered me the job and told them that everything about their offer was great, but that I felt like it wasn’t the right time for a change. The New Orleans company contacted me about a month later and said they had a new position open that had a higher salary and they wanted me to come and meet with them to talk about it. I told them again that I needed to stay where I was for the time being.

Work continued along as usual for the next few months. In December of 2019, I went from unhappy at work to miserable at work. December was a full month of Mondays. January wasn’t much better. I still hung in there and pushed forward. February settled back to more normal, but there were a couple of meetings at the end of February that turned things back to miserable.

After some time praying about the situation, I felt led that it was now ok to move on. I called a recruiter friend in Baton Rouge and asked if she had anything that might fit my skills. She said she was working a different area now, but that she had a coworker friend that probably had something for me. She submitted me for a couple of jobs and I had a couple of phone interviews. One interview with a company in Baton Rouge went very well and an in-person interview was scheduled. The recruiter scheduled an interview with another company in Ponchatoula for later in the day. I went to both interviews and called my recruiter after the second. I told her that both went well, but that I much preferred the first. She said that they wanted to offer me the job. I felt like I was going to take it, but told her I needed a little time and I would let her know. I called Debbie and filled her in, then headed for Jackson.

Praying and driving for a couple of hours, I heard very distinctly, "Say ‘yes’, but let Me worry about the details." When I got home and Debbie and I talked about it, she said that was the same answer that she had gotten while praying over the decision.

The next day I let them know that I would accept their offer and looked forward to starting with them soon. I gave my notice at the old job and offered the standard two weeks’ notice. My two weeks was accepted, but the corporate office turned off my computer access and building access later in the week. I talked to my immediate supervisor and he said he would take care of the paperwork to make my resignation effective at the end of the day.

On the following Monday, I started work at my new job on a contract-to-hire basis. My second week in the office, Debbie went with me for the first part of the week so she could job hunt. The next Sunday afternoon, as I drove from Jackson to Baton Rouge for my third week at the new job, I got a call from the company telling me that we would all be working from home due to COVID. I got a few of my things from my mom’s house and headed back to Jackson.

We both began working from home, leaving the details to God. We had no idea when or where or how we would be moving. As we told friends that we would be moving and they would start asking questions, we told them we didn’t know details, but God did.

Debbie gave her job 5 weeks’ notice, with the understanding that if she found something in Baton Rouge before that, she would leave sooner. She continued working from home until that time came to a close. Her employer asked her to continue working for them from home for a while. They had not found anyone to replace Debbie and she had not found another job, partly due to COVID.  After a few more weeks, her boss asked Debbie to pray about continuing to work for them from home in Louisiana. Debbie told him that she had been praying for exactly that and that he had just given her the desire of her heart.

When I accepted my new job, we started thinking about where we might live. As "two weeks" of working from home extended into months, that got put on hold like so many other parts of life. After a couple of months, we started looking again. I told Debbie that I wanted to look at the area of Port Vincent and French Settlement. I didn’t know why, it was just a feeling. I’m not sure that I had ever been to either town.

We had both done some online searching and knew what kinds of things we did and didn’t want in a new home. After a couple of months, we decided to start looking. Debbie contacted the real estate agent that had helped our daughter Ashley find her home. Debbie gave her links to some of the homes that we liked and our basic parameters. She contacted Debbie a short time later and told her that we had appointments to see half a dozen homes on Sunday. We were a bit surprised! The first few that we saw did not fit what we wanted. We next went to one that was our favorite of what I had found online. We liked it ok, but nothing special. After that one, we went to see one that Debbie had found. It had not been on my list because it was just above the price range that I had been searching. We both fell in love with this house immediately. We looked at one other after that, but didn’t really need to.

As we were leaving to go back to Jackson, I looked at my phone for the first time in several hours. There was a text message from a friend that I used to work with. She said she knew that we were moving and wanted to know if we were interested in selling our house in Jackson. I got in touch with her and over the next couple of days she and her sister came by to see the house and made an offer on it. That offer later fell through.

We made an offer on the house that we loved in French Settlement, contingent on selling our house in Jackson. We found out that the owner had separately listed the house for sale and for lease. They had someone ready to move in right away under a lease, so we added to our offer that we would lease the home until we could close on the sale. They accepted our offer and we started making plans to move.

French Settlement is a great location for us. First, we love the village and the people. Second, it’s about the same commute to work as what I was used to in Jackson. Third, we’re just over half an hour to Ponchatoula and my mom. Fourth, we’re just under an hour to Plaquemine and Ashley and our granddaughter Annie.

Our second daughter Heather recently completed her MBA and had looked for a job more in line with her degree, or at least with some upward mobility. She didn’t find anything in the Jackson area. While all of this was going on with us, she decided to look in the south Louisiana area for a job. She found one on a web site. She applied and told us that the company name sounded familiar. It was the same company that I work for! She interviewed with them and a couple of weeks later was offered the job, which she accepted. After some discussion and prayerful consideration, we all decided that she would move in and live with us in the new house for a while. That would give her some time to get some medical bills paid off and also time to figure out where she wants to live later. She is working in the office during the day and is able to do any overtime work from home. It’s working out very well. The job is a good step up from where she was, and has room to move up.

When the sale of the Jackson house fell through, we contacted a friend at church who is a real estate agent. She and her husband came over to talk to us about putting the house on the market. They had a number of suggestions for improving the "curb appeal" of the house. We got busy making the house gorgeous. All of the carpet was replaced. All of the bedrooms and bathrooms and a couple of other rooms were painted. The bathrooms were updated a little bit. We had some exterior repairs made. We cleaned the exterior of the house. We pressure washed the back deck. There was storm damage on the roof and we committed to replacing it. We contacted our insurance company and they covered the roof replacement. We replaced the oven and microwave in the kitchen. This all took about a month, but the house looked fabulous.

Most everything had been moved from Jackson to French Settlement. The last couple of weeks I was basically camping out on a mattress and working from a folding table in the living room as the finishing touches were made on the house.

Our agent came over with a photographer to get pictures of the house. As it turns out, he and I knew each other in Louisiana over 40 years ago. He did a great job on the pictures and we put the house on the market. About five days later, we had an offer. We discussed it and gave them a counter-offer, which the buyer accepted.

We thought we would be waiting for the Jackson house to sell before getting the mortgage for the French Settlement house, but the mortgage company contacted us and said that we were approved to make the purchase BEFORE selling the other house. Our plan had been to use the proceeds of the sale to cover all of our cost for the purchase. We talked and we had enough in savings to close the purchase, but it would make things tight for a little while. We closed on the purchase and were now the proud parents of two mortgages.

A few weeks later, we were to close on the sale in Jackson. It got postponed a couple of times. We finally got a date and went to Jackson to sign our part of the paperwork. The attorney told us that the paperwork for the buyers would be arriving from the mortgage company that afternoon and they would be signing. That was Thursday afternoon and it didn’t happen. We had had to extend the purchase contract to get that far. The extension ended on Friday. By Tuesday morning, we didn’t have an extension and the buyers had still not signed. We had gotten word that there were some problems with the buyer’s mortgage and that was the holdup. We told our agent that we would extend one more time, but that if the buyers had not closed by end of day Thursday, we were putting the house back on the market. The buyers received and signed their paperwork four hours later.

On September 8th, I switched from contract to full hire.

Through the last six months, we’ve trusted the details to God. It’s a good thing. We would have never figured out how to make all of this work out this well.

We have now pulled paperwork together and have transferred our vehicles and we have new LA driver’s licenses and are registered to vote. We’re official.

 

Trust God with the details!