I remember the day my parents took my sisters and me aside and told us the big news. My younger sister, Natasha, and I were jumping on the trampoline in our nice big backyard when my parents called for this “family meeting”. I was 12 at the time, my younger sister 7, and my older sister, Jill, 14. I was in the middle of my 7th grade year, and wasn’t very happy with school at all. I actually wanted to get away somehow, I just didn’t know how to. Some of my friends were, well… I don’t exactly know how to explain it, annoying the heck out of me… and it was really hard for me to find a new crowd to hang out with because I had been friends with these people from the time I got to Ohio until then. So I guess you could say that God was preparing my heart to move even before I knew what was going on. My older sister on the other hand didn’t exactly take too lightly to the idea. She was going to be a freshman in High School and to her, friends meant everything. Starting over was not exactly in her plan. My little sister really didn’t know what was happening, and didn’t really have an opinion on the whole thing. I don’t think she liked the daycare she was going to at the time, so I think she was happy to get away from that.
Being that my parents had been unemployed for almost two months; they became desperate to find a job, any job. We were supported mainly by our loving church, Zion Christian Fellowship, only 15 minutes away from us. They helped us make ends meet.
My dad couldn’t find any jobs in the direct Ohio area, and began to expand his search to countries outside the US. Almost a day after my dad had applied for this one job as a country coordinator for the Caucasus region he had gotten a call back, asking to be interviewed over the phone. My parents knew it was a sign that we were meant to go overseas. After not hearing a thing from any of the other jobs that he had applied to, this was like a wake up call. This was what the family was supposed to do.
My parents had talked about it for a long time before they came to us about the whole situation. I think that my older sister felt like they had made the decision to go even before asking us. I don’t even think that she thought they were asking us about it, but telling us we were going. My mom probably had the hardest time dealing with the move out of all of us. So my dad went ahead and moved a couple of months before we joined him to check out the schools and where we would be living to ease her mind about it.
Excited as I was to get away, I, like my mom, had the fear of the unknown. I didn’t know really how to make new friends; I didn’t know if I could make new friends. I was so unsure about going to a whole different country, which spoke a totally different language that had new surroundings and a totally different atmosphere. We were moving to a former soviet republic. Do you know how scary that sounded to a 12 year old? I feel like I was more open to the move than my older sister was though. And like I said before, my little sister really didn’t know what was going on.
I think some of the feelings that my older sister felt was that my parents didn’t care about what she thought or felt about the whole situation. When in all reality, they really did care about us, and that’s why they came to us in the first place. I think she felt they were trying to punish her for something that she didn’t deserve. Of course it wasn’t her fault at all, but you know how kids get when their parents make big decisions without the family.
Now that I look back on it, I don’t know what we would be like if we hadn’t have moved. I don’t know where we would be, or what we would be doing. All I know is that when our family moved, it made us so much closer then we ever were before.
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