Our Journey 2

In June, Dennis and I traveled to India so I could experience where we would be living. We left our kids with his parents for 2 weeks. We flew in to New Delhi and took a flight down to Bangalore. The company was still determined to set up a factory so we spent several days touring buildings that were contenders for the site. We also spent one afternoon visiting a local subdivision and school. Bangalore was a nice town. It has a great church presence and a strong expat community. The weather was great but the traffic was awful. It took forever to get across town which meant we spent much of our time in the car.

There was another town that was a contender for the factory, Chennai. It had a great SEZ zone which provided tax benefits for the company. It was also on the coast and provided ease of shipment. We caught a flight to meet with the Indo American Chamber of Commerce.  Their staff was amazing in setting up appointments with local leaders that most companies can’t get meet with. She set up meetings with several owners of potential spots. Nothing felt right. Chennai was much hotter and the city wasn’t as pretty. We figured we would take home information about both spots and see what the company wanted to do. 

As we sat in the last meeting, someone suggested we look at Coimbatore. We had heard it mentioned in earlier meetings, but didn’t give it a second thought. He explained the benefits and why we should look. It wasn’t even a place we were considering but as he talked both Dennis and I felt that we needed to go there. It was more like Bangalore but had a small SEZ as well. With just a short time left on our trip, we booked a round trip ticket for the next day to Coimbatore. 

We woke early to spend a long day of flights, visits, and then more flights back. It was a great day. We were able to visit factories that we needed to even on short notice and make contacts that were helpful. It offered many things that were perfect for our family. There were 7 branches, which are small congregations, the weather was temperate, and the traffic was more manageable. The countryside atmosphere reminded us more of rural Idaho but with palm trees.  With how everything had worked out so perfectly to get us there, we decided it was the spot we thought was right.

We returned to the States and discussions continued. Alex returned from his mission to Canada one week after our return. We were busy with welcome home parties and trying to help him get back into work and our family routine. We also had our house listed for sale. We had been trying to sell it for over a year. When we decided to move, we had listed it with a new realtor.  A week after Alex’s return we accepted an offer on our house with a sale date at the end of July. Now on top of regular summer activities, we needed to pack or sell everything we owned. Dennis family then had a family reunion over the 4th of July. We went to Utah to visit Temple Square and play at Lagoon, a large amusement park. It was great to be disconnected from the worry of what was happening next in our lives. 

As we returned from our “vacation”, reality set in and so did the mood of the kids. What we were doing wasn’t “fun” any longer as they sold most of their possessions and prepared to leave their friends. We had 3 weeks to fire sale all our stuff, pack the items we were keeping, and donate everything else. Then there were decision about what to do with our year supply of food, art work, valuables, and other items that can’t handle the extremes in temperatures. Our plan was to pack those items we wanted to keep into a 20 foot shipping container to be left on Hatfield Manufacturing’s land. Other items were forked out to friends and family to store for us. Then we began living out of suitcases. One per person with two spare suitcases with family items.  (see the post titled How Do You Move Overseas for a list of what we brought). Dennis stayed in Gooding with a single work associate that had a spare bedroom so he could continue to work. The kids and I would spend 4 weeks at his parents home, come to visit him in Gooding and then move in with my parents for 4-6 weeks until we would be ready to fly to India. 

We ended up having garage sales two weekends in a row and then utilizing the help of friends to haul the remaining truck load to a thrift store and to clean the house. Our house closing date had moved up a week and our timeline was tighter than we liked. We couldn’t have been ready if it hadn’t been for their kindness. As we made the final touches on the house, we realized that our house was way hotter than it should be. We thought it was from having so many people working in it in the middle of July. We soon realized that the air conditioner wasn’t working properly. We were supposed to close the next morning. At this point we were tired and stressed. We said a quick family prayer that all would work out. The next morning we frantically called the repairman and realtor to get things in order to meet the deadline.

Everything worked out in the end and we left for Idaho Falls. Dennis left for India again for two weeks to find the right site in Coimbatore to build the factory. His partners would be meeting him there half way through his trip. I spent those two weeks preparing to take the Praxis, a teacher certification test, I needed to get my teaching certificate valid. I had been working on a provisional one. I was able to successfully take the test in one attempt. We then worked on getting addresses changed, buying more suitcases, and preparing to live overseas. We were grateful for technology that allowed us to visit with Dennis daily. 

Dennis’ partners arrived in India and began the final steps in securing a factory site. They were visiting various sites, negotiating, writing up the needed paperwork and obtaining the necessary signatures. Partway through the last week, we received a call from Dennis telling us that things weren’t going as planned in the formation of the business. The plans had been put on the back burner and nothing had been finalized. With just two days left on the trip it was unlikely that an agreement would be made. We had sold everything we owned, separated our family, committed to this plan, and I had quit my job. We both felt confused, sad, and angry. What would we do now?