How We Planned to Move to Italy and Ended up Choosing New Zealand; Our Story Part 1

“Let’s move to New Zealand and work in the wine industry.” That’s something we just wouldn’t have said or even thought, but here we are. It’s crazy to me that this is what we’re planning now, because we never would have started there.

People have asked what God specifically said to us, but He didn’t just tell us the end goal; it’s been a slow progression of small steps from what we thought we wanted and what we were willing to get on board with, to where we’re headed now. We honestly may not even end up living or working where we think we will, but that will be okay, as long as we keep trusting and following God. We’ve learned that even at this point, God could still change anything, so we’ll just have to see what happens!

This is the story of what’s happened so far.

Shock has been the most common response when we’ve told people that we’re going to move to New Zealand. That’s fair; we’ve been dreaming of living in Italy for two years, and we told everyone that Rome was the plan. It was the plan, until God changed our minds at the last moment.

I used to think I’d never be willing to move away. I’ve learned to never say “never,” because typically when I say I’ll never do something, I end up doing it. God probably laughs in heaven and thinks, “oh Chelsea, you have no idea.”

When we got married over 10 years ago, we planned to always stay in Saskatoon. After all, our families are here, and we bought into the Saskatchewan mentality that you have to get a 9:00 to 5:00, buy a truck and car, buy a house, and tie yourself down with payments, and you should have all the kids too (but maybe on the 5 year plan since we got married young). Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this plan if you’re most people, or if that’s actually what you dream of doing with your life. As we got older, and started experiencing different things, we realized that plan was wrong for us. Our cousins almost prophesied over us that we would move one day, and we started to realize that maybe we would be open to moving… like, a 6 hour drive away. Our minds were so small back then! Those same cousins once asked my husband if he could do anything in the world for work, and if money were no object, what would he do? He was stumped. He had no idea. For years, he had no idea.

You’d probably believe that almost everyone tried to convince us that settling in our city of birth was the only way of life… but we weren’t convinced. We just felt like settling here was just that – settling. We felt deeply that there was something more out there for us.

We started becoming interested in moving overseas somewhere after we took our first Europe trip in 2015. “The Travel Bug” is a real thing and we got it bad! House Hunters International inspires us. People do this. Every day, people move abroad. It’s possible. It eventually got to the point where we knew that if we didn’t make every attempt at this move abroad, we’d regret it for the rest of our lives. We’ve been back to Europe two more times, and we love it there, so when we decided to move, we naturally decided that somewhere in Europe should be our new home. But what would we do there?

I knew of job opportunities in the English teaching field, and as I am a teacher, I felt safe and secure with that choice. I graduated from a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course in the fall of 2017, and we picked Italy as our destination for several reasons. First, we had to pick somewhere. Second, we have been to Italy before, and love the culture, food, and scenery. We decided on Rome because my course advisers told me there are lots of jobs there, and it’s technically in a tropical climate. No winter! (Except it snowed there in 2017.) We didn’t know what my husband would do, though. He always joked he’d sell ice cream in the square. We also always said when people asked us where we would live that we were open to almost anywhere. We always said Rome, but we knew that it might not be Rome, and we were open to living anywhere we got jobs, really.

We used to dream about living in Italy. We would do “Italian Friday’s,” as we called them. My husband would cook an Italian dish, and we would have Italian appetizers and Italian wine, and we would dream together about what it would be like living there.

We rented out our house in the summer of 2017, and lived in our camper as a practice run. Could we live in a small space? (Not a problem). Could I survive with a smaller amount of my clothes and shoes, and no cable? (I did surprisingly well). What would it be like to rent out our house? (It went over plainly awful with some family members and friends, but our tenants were fantastic and a gift from God).

We planned to move to Rome in January of 2018, as that is one of the main hiring months for English teachers. (We were not sure how hopping the ice-cream-in-the-square business is at that time of year.)

Then, several things happened that made us feel we were supposed to be home for one more year. I was offered a renewal on my teaching contract, and the way it all worked out was nearly impossible that I should have had that job. Both of my sisters in law were expecting our two new nieces, and my brother in law, who had been single forever, was dating a girl we figured he’d marry. Our passports needed to be renewed in January, so it wasn’t a good time to leave, and our mortgage was up for renewal, also in January! A best friend invited me on a Maui trip in October to celebrate our 30th birthdays, and we decided to go, and used up our last bit of savings for that trip. So it was decided; we would stay all year, and go to Rome in September of 2018 (another prime hiring month).

…to be continued.