As most already know,
Linda has worked for the University of Arkansas for four years now and David
has worked for a multi-state natural gas company, SourceGas, for three
years. We decided to get out of the American rut of
drudgery-working and "escape the norm". We are in good health, have great
children who have long since married and moved from home, and three
wonderful grandchildren, with another one on the way. So, why wait until we
retire, have possible health problems, and who knows what else, to retire and
enjoy the awesome world God created.
We sold our home and the
three acres it sat on in Arkansas and purchased a small home in Broken
Arrow, OK near our children to home-base from. We are nearly
finished in remodeling the new house and our last day of work will be
January 30, 2015.
For those who don't know
what our future plans entail let me give you a quick synopsis.
So far you have read what we have done; now, the future.
After talking one evening about
the doldrums of life, Linda started searching the
internet for anything dealing with travel and came across a website called
Workaway. When looking at the site we found over 11,000 hosts
world-wide who have their homes open for people to come live and work for and
with them for room and board. The homes are pretty much anywhere in the world you can
imagine, and too, the homes vary from high end to low end. So,
you can also imagine, we had to be, and could be, very choosy in selecting
a place to stay.
We went onto the
site and read many profiles of Workaway hosts, chose several we
liked and made contact with them. (Linda did most of the work and
research) We organized and planned with the hosts what they require of
us, then set up dates to stay with six different host in Australia and New
Zealand, combined, for a three month period between February and May of
2015. Workaway hosts mostly require workawayers to
work 3 - 5 hours per day for room and board. All we have to do is
pay to travel to and from our chosen destinations and have spending money for
whatever.
When our three month
adventure is complete we will return to Broken Arrow and plan to spend three
months from late spring to mid-summer with our kids, grandkids, other family
and friends. We plan on going back out again for another 3-month
adventure to France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland between August and early November. When
we return from that adventure we plan on being home from November through
the holidays. If all goes well and we like the Workaway life we plan to
start all over, choosing new destinations to Workaway, again, in 2016.
The countdown is nearly
over until we begin this next journey. I hope everyone will follow
us in this great adventure as we share our lives with
you. Please keep us in your prayers for safety and health, but most of
all for us to share the love of Jesus through word and action to
all those we meet along the way as we hope to make new life-long
friends.
David and Linda
