Overwhelmed by Grace

We made a huge move. Not only did we move across the world, but as James' first duty assignment it was a whole other level of craziness. And for some reason it has gone very smoothly. Something I had to continue to remind myself of before we moved was that God provided for us in Georgia, so he will provide for us in Italy. By reminding myself of the past faithfulness, then my present day doubt and worry seems to subside. We have been here for 2 weeks today and I don't think that I could complete the list of blessings that we have been given, but I will try to explain.

My sister introduced me to this girl. One day her and her friend were chattin' it up and they both realized that they had sisters, who married military boys, and who would be in Italy at the same time. So of course they put us in touch. Kaitlin and I started emailing this past summer about random stuff, but random stuff that helped make the transition a lot easier. Not only did our communication make the jump less frightening, but we found out that her husband is the Chosen Company CO*. Perfect and hysterical. THEN we find out that James good friend from college, Quinn, was the XO* for his company. On our first day we were picked up by Kaitlin, ate Popeye's Chicken :), got James a working cell phone, given a welcome bag with wine and cheese, got settled in the hotel, and then picked up by Kaitlin again and taken to a dinner with all of the other platoon leaders wives and Quinn. We laid in bed that night and literally said, "Did this really just happen?" The next day I got an email from the Battalion Commander's* wife....which meant that she got my email address within 24hrs and already had me on the listserv for the FRG and invited me to an ornament exchange. No big deal. Quinn proceed to walk around with James to introduce him to people and help him get signed in to everything on post. Quinn and his wife Archimedes feed us for the next couple of nights as well- which was much, much better than anything I could make in my hotel "kitchen". We have gotten to spend so much time with James' goddaughter and her siblings, and lets be real, being with kids in general is always good for the soul. It took them a little time to warm up, but now the little one calls Uncle Jimmy her boyfriend, so I think he is in pretty good standings. Me on the other hand, well, I just light up at being called Auntie Anna. It is precious. I have made friends with the other platoon leaders wives. They have invited us to church, picked us up for church, gone to eat dinner with us, and best of all randomly driven around Vicenza looking for this house that we are interested in.

This list barely touches everything that we have been given and probably sounds more like mumbled jargon. Everyone has gone over and beyond to make us feel welcome, comfortable, and as at home as we could feel. They made it possible for us to not be locked away in the little inn and confined to post, which has done a lot for my mental status. The community here is so tight knit, which is awesome, but intimidating- it can be hard to let people into your close circles. Therefore my mindset is to just dive in head first which has more than likely made me look slightly ridiculous, but at this point I can still blame that on jet lag :)

God is great. God is good. And I write this so that on days where I am overwhelmed, homesick, or just want to know how we got in the situation we are in, I can look back and remember that God does have his hand in everything and he does provide, which means that he will provide for the future. Let's hope I can remember that :)

Here is our first bottle of wine!

A military review:
CO= Commanding Officer, or company commander. This guy in charge of all of the platoons in a company. James in charge of 1 platoon.
XO=Executive Officer, or basically the logistic guy for the whole company...very difficult.
Battalion Commander= Usually a Colonel. He is in charge of 3-4 company's. The CO's direct boss.