Walking in God's Grace - Part 1.

Then it came to me - KEEP GOD AT THE CENTRE OF IT ALL!

This is my testimony of how God has worked in our lives over the past year for us. Don't get me wrong, God is always working in our lives but he has beautifully orchestrated the past year for us and without Him we certainly wouldn't be where we are now!

About a year ago, my husband (Luke) and I decided we were going to move to Canada with our 2 children Josh and Elijah. Something we had always wanted to do since we got married was move to another country. Now seemed like the right time to do it.

Not really knowing where to start, we spent hours looking into how we go about doing this. We found out Canada immigration is done on a points based system. Surprise surprise we didn't have enough points. There were, however, some things we could do to improve this and reach our goal of about 450 points. This was roughly the minimum amount we needed to start making our way through the immigration process.

So firstly, we made sure we renewed our passports - fairly important! Then we each took a language test to prove we could speak English. Sounds easy enough when English is your first language but the test lasted just over half a day and seemed as though it was designed to catch you out. You really had to be on the ball! I couldn't believe I was nervous!! God's presence was really noticeable on test day. When the time came we just got on with it and both Luke and I scored high. 

Our language scores bumped our points up but it still wasn't enough. We still needed around another 50 points. We seemed to have 2 options - Luke finds a job in Canada which would give us the extra 50 points or he studies a course over there for about 4 years which would give us more than enough points upon returning to the UK once the course is complete.

Both options posed a problem. It's hard to secure a job in a different country when the employer knows they will then have to wait at least 6 months for us to complete the immigration process before Luke could start work. If Luke studied over there, the pressure on us financially would be massive and the environment we and the kids would be in had the possibility of being turbulent. 

I personally wouldn't be able to work for a while since our youngest son was 10 months old at that point. So the pressure was really on Luke to make it work for us financially. 

We prayed about the situation and pushed both doors. We asked God to firmly close the door on any routes He didn't want us to go down.

Luke found a course at a university in a small city called Brandon in the province of Manitoba. It seemed promising though we knew this route would be long and hard. At the same time Luke looked for work online.

I knew I needed to help but I wasn't sure how to, as Luke's work is quite complicated. Then it came to me - KEEP GOD AT THE CENTRE OF IT ALL! The only thing I could think of was to contact churches in Canada, tell them our story and ask them if they knew of any companies in Luke's field who are hiring. I started in Alberta, googled churches and emailed what must have been all the churches in Alberta. Then I moved along to the next province, Saskatchewan, and did the same thing. This was quite a lengthy process and I only had the occasional response - all of which were a no goer. Having spent a few days doing this I planned to spend one final day sending out emails. After the rough night I had with the baby though it was so tempting to just go for a nap myself when I put him down for his daytime sleep. This is my only free time in the day and if I had a sleep I would be sacrificing that opportunity to send out another batch of emails to churches, this time in the province of Manitoba. 

Making Joshes school lunch through bleary, tired eyes I was trying to decide what I'll do later in the day - catch up on much needed sleep or send more emails. Just then I heard Josh coming downstairs. I said to myself "if by some miracle he's dressed in his school uniform I'll sacrifice my nap and send out that final batch of emails". I couldn't believe it! He was dressed! You wouldn't believe how much nagging it usually took before he'd get dressed!! I knew there and then I had to send out emails in the day and results were going to be had!

Baby Elijah's nap time came and off I went spamming all the local churches in Manitoba. I couldn't believe it! I didn't have to wait long before I got the reply we were waiting for "I believe this place in Winnipeg is hiring". I checked out their website and got so excited. I knew this was the one! I knew Luke would fit right in! 

To cut a very long story down a bit, Luke caught there attention with some doughnuts and was invited for an interview!

Our 2 options were both now very real. Interestingly, in the vast expanse of Canada, the cities of Brandon and Winnipeg were only about 120 miles away from each other! We knew we were in the right area. We just weren't  sure which door led to where God wanted us. We really didn't want to get it wrong!

Luke did well at his interview in Canada  and upon his arrival back to the UK it seemed to take forever to hear a definite result. It was a yes! But this would still only give us just enough points to scrape through.

One morning, I was in the car with a friend who had no knowledge of our plans to move. Driving past a new housing estate that was in the middle of being built just down the road from us he said jokingly "thinking of moving?" To which I replied "yes actually! But not there!" He quickly responded with "Australia? Manitoba?" I couldn't help but laugh with surprise! I hadn't even heard of Manitoba before our little adventure began and of all the places in the world it was the second one he mentioned! That was more confirmation that we were in the right area and God is still in it with us. Funnily enough...Australia was our plan B!!

Both Luke and I knew a decision had to be made between our 2 options at some point. We both felt quite unsettled about the university in Brandon option so we decided to cancel the application for the study permit.

Hopefully, now we had a job offer, it wouldn't be too long before we were selected to apply for the permanent residency application. We seemed to have skimmed our way through. This is where God went from gently leading us to really going above and beyond our expectations and really paving a way for us!.........(To be continued next week).

Author
Samantha Tarplin