New Zealand Approved!!!

Ok, so by the picture you can tell our interview didn't go so well!  and by not going so well, I mean it went fantastic! ;) We found out the day after our phone interview (see post below) that we had been approved!  We waited a few days to post this as we wanted to make sure that all the family knew first.  Plus, it's not like anyone checks this everyday, so I figured we would be good!

We have 18 months to make the move to NZ and activate our visas before they are no longer any good, so you can be pretty sure that we will no longer be in the USA by April 2013.  We are looking to move by fall of 2012, but only time will tell.  The main factor to decide when we move is when I find a job!  (hopefully I will be able to secure one before the move).  Speaking of the move, we will be selling off most of our stuff, so keep your eyes peeled for our mega huge moving sale! :D

Now that this is becoming more of a reality, it has been a little rough on our families.  So we would ask that you keep us and our families in your prayers, that they would be comforted and be able to deal with sadness and any other feelings that come about.  We appreciate all the love, support and advice we have been receiving along our journey, as this isn't always the easiest for us either.

Needless to say, we are thrilled for this new chapter in our lives and where God will lead us.  We pray that no matter what the circumstance is, we would draw near to God, as well as to each other.

-Dan "the soon to be NZ man" Richards

Crazy Fast!!!

Well, it has been sometime since anyone has posted on here, so it's definitely time for an update.  We are getting pretty close to hearing if we are going to get our visas or not.  In fact, we have an interview tomorrow at 5am over the phone.  The time slots weren't too appealing, as it was anywhere from 2am to 8am (the interview is with  the branch in london, so we have to be on their schedule, go figure!).  Really, it's probably the best time to do it, that way we don't have 3 kids screaming into the phone!

As long as the interview goes well, we should hear within a few weeks whether we have been approved or not.  We are pretty shocked that it has gone so fast, it hasn't even been 6 months since we have started the process and we are almost to the end! I have heard of cases that take YEARS to complete, so we are pretty lucky.  In reality though, who wouldn't want us! ;)

There have been a lot of things going on in our lives in the meantime, which I won't get into now but all is good, and God is great!

And lastly on this quick update, I just want to thank all the family and friends that have supported us this far! it really means a lot to us, and i know it isn't easy for some people.  Either way, we love you all and can't wait to share our adventures with you!

And lastly again, for a timeline for all who wonder, if approved, we would have up to 18 months to make the move.  So it could go faster, but the maximum time is that.   So if you all could pray that I find a job soon, that would be great! :D

-The Dans (but Dan "the guy" wrote this one)

(and the pic at the top is pretty much how I imagine our phone interview going)

Brody walking

Brody started taking his first steps early June and started fully walking over the past two weeks. I could never catch him on video tape. Everytime I turned on the camera he would just sit down and crawl over to me, but I finally caught him last week! .

Reassurance

We have been having a lot of people ask us how the whole New Zealand process is going, so I think it is time for an update. We received our ITA (Invitation to apply) early May. We have been working on getting everything filled out for that and saving up the money needed to submit our application. All of us have our medical examinations completed and are now just waiting to get our police certificates back from the FBI. Once we have those we will be able to send off our applictaion.

Lately I have been having a lot of doubts on moving to New Zealand. I get so nervous about leaving our home, family, and church. Dan and I decided to go to church tonight since I will be serving in the nursery tomorrow morning and will miss the service. On our way to church I was talking to him about my feelings and the doubts I have been having over these past several weeks. I told him that we just really need to be praying more about it and make sure this is what God wants us to do. We got to church and during the service the pastor started talking about Paul when he was in prison, writing to the church in Colosse (Colossions 1:24-29).  In these verses Paul was talking about how to be a true servant of the Lord.  One of the points that was made was how Paul rejoiced in his suffering for the sake of other believers, and was willing to sacrifice his personal comfort in order to spread the Word.  Our Pastor then began to talk about how we are afraid to ask God what his will is for our lives, as we may not like what he is telling us.  The problem is we enjoy being comfortable in our lives, not only in our earthly lives but our spiritual lives as well.  It is only when we become uncomfortable, that we really start to stretch our faith and grow in our relationship with Jesus.  

Toward the end of the service we felt it would be good to go up to the front of the church to have the prayer team pray with us about our decision of moving to New Zealand.  Once we were up there we met Pastor Garth at the front and started talking with him about moving.  You could see immediately that something was spinning in his mind.  He asked us what part we were moving to because he was going to a prayer meeting later this week for a man named Franz, who is actually a Pastor at Calvary Chapel (another church here in Modesto), that is moving to New Zealand with his family next month to set up a missionary school near Auckland. He asked us if it would be ok for him to give Franz our contact information to help set us up and get us connected once we are over there. Before we had even started praying, God was filling us with the reassurance we have been needing, that this is His will. He has been making this path so clear to us, so we are continuing to step out in faith on our journey. Everything we have been doing to prepare for our move has been going so smoothly, and it just feels right.  I know we still have many more hurdles to jump before we are even close to going, but tonight really helped to re-ignite our passion for God's will as well as our lives. 

To sum up this post in a few short sentences... Dan and I are in awe of how amazing God is and what he is doing in our lives.  Even if New Zealand doesn't end up working out, it will still be gain as this process is bringing us so much closer to Him.  Which in the end is all that really matters! 
~Danielle and Dan

Mother's Day

I woke up this morning to my wonderful husband making me a delicious breakfast! Not only did I enjoy it, but the boys thought it was pretty tasty as well. Matty was crazy about the turkey bacon. I think he ate 5 pieces on his own! After breakfast we went to church and enjoyed a wonderful service about True love. Then we headed off to the beach for the rest of the day.

We drove to Half Moon Bay and Matthew and Grayson loved the huge rocks on the beach. They were climbing all over them. I wanted to get a picture with the three boys, so asked Matty to pick a spot to take the picture and he walked us all the way up a rock over to this perfect spot where the waves were crashing behind us. It made for a really pretty picture :-).

Mama and Brody

We enjoyed a nice little picnic, built some sand castles, and played in the water until the boys were too cold to move. After that we loaded everyone back up into the car and drove to Memorial park  where we got to see some huge sequoia trees. It was so beautiful! Unfortunatley the boys were getting tired and cranky, so we weren't able to get pictures. Hopefully we will go back this summer so we can walk the trails and see a little more.They had some nice little camp sites out there, so we may try doing a camping trip soon.
It was such a beautiful day! Happy Mother's Day to all of the amazing Mama's out there!

Boys and I running through the water

Writing in the sand..We love Jesus!!

Matty and Grayson stomping down sand castles

Pictures

Dan and I wanted to get pictures of the three boys to frame as a gift for our Moms on Mother's Day. I found some adorable little overalls on clearance at Target in each of the boys' size, so I thought it would be so cute to take them downtown and get a picture of them in front of one of the old trains. Of course there never ended up being a good time to get down there, so today being our last day to get a picture and already having a ton of other things to do, we decided just to take them in our front yard really quick. It was super windy out front and the two older boys didn't want to stand in the grass because it is "too itchy", so we had to bribe them with candy in order to get them to cooperate. Brody loves to be outside so getting him out there wasn't a problem, but getting him to sit still was the difficult part! It took a lot of work, but finally we got Matty and Grayson to hold Brody's hands and keep him standing next to them long enough to get a decent shot. So here they are.....The last one was the best we could get. Brody kept trying to take off and Matty and Grayson were getting frustrated with him. They just wanted to get it over with so they could have their candy ;-).

 

~Danielle

New Zealand Dreaming....

As a few of you may know, we have had a dream to move to New Zealand for the past year.  In January we began wanting to make our dream reality, so we started looking into what it would take for us to move over there. After a few months of looking into it and praying about it together, we decided it was something we both really wanted and started the process of working toward getting our Residence Visas. The first step is applying for the EOI (expression of interest), but before you can even apply you must have passports for each family member. We got everything together for that and after about 2 months had passports for everyone. Once the EOI is filled out it gets put into a "pool" with all the other people applying for Residence.  The way that they select from the pool is based on a point system.  In order to meet the minimum requirements you must have at least 100 points. When we filled ours out we had 110.  The majority of our points came from Dan having an engineering degree which is on the Long Term Skills Shortage List (LTSSL). We submitted our EOI on April 9, 2011 and heard it can take up to 6 months to get selected, and if you are not selected within those six months you can apply again. After only a week and a half we were selected! This was extremely exciting for us, but at the same time really nerve wracking. There are so many reasons we want to move to New Zealand, but our family is here and that is what makes this decision so hard. After our EOI application was selected we had to wait three weeks to find out if it was successful. The New Zealand Immagration department (INZ) has to review the application to make sure everything was filled out correctly and that your points are accurate. We got a letter on Saturday stating that it was approved and now they will be mailing us the ITA (invitation to apply). We have four months to complete the ITA. Once we mail it back it can take several months to hear back from them. If our application is approved we will then undergo an interview, which will be over the phone for us due to distance. If all goes well with the interview and we are granted Residence then we have a year to move over there and activate our visas.
God is teaching us so much through this whole process. We have had a lot of doubts and "what if's" over these past several months, but we have been praying for God to open our eyes and ears to Him so we can hear His call for our family. We continue to learn that He is in control and we just need to be still and know He is God. We don't know what's in store for us, but we look forward to the adventure God has planned!  ~Danielle

First Post

It's April 25th at 9:48pm.... Here is our blog!  I hope you enjoy reading this post.  Also we are listening to Ascend the Hill.. you should listen to them.  That's all for now.  -Dan (the man)