Andrew & Anderina

My Facebook memories today showed me this photo from four years ago, with the caption, “Dining out, in celebration of our last night being Aucklanders together”. The following day, my husband Andrew drove to Whanganui to start setting up our new home, while I stayed on another couple of nights in our rental to finalise matters in Auckland.

I remember those months as some of the most intense “adulting” I’d ever done in my life. I had decided to apply for a job that was a bit outside of my comfort zone, and approximately 450km from the job I held then. I was equal parts delighted and horrified to be granted an interview, and then to be offered the position. After considerable prayer and discussion, we reached the conclusion that if we stayed in Auckland, we’d always feel a bit like we were struggling to get by, and our opportunities would be limited. Whereas, if we took the leap of faith, accepted the job, and moved to a faraway city neither of us had any particular connection with, we’d be in the position to try new things, meet new people, and, as I may have expressed it in song, watch our children “bloom and grow forever”.

I’ll never forget our single day of house-hunting. It poured with rain all day long. We saw 12 properties in rapid succession, and most were so obviously unsuitable that our treasured checklist never even got opened. This house had not even been on our list (we had thought it outside our price range), and yet, almost from the moment we drove up the driveway, we knew. This would be our home.

We couldn’t have done it without Liberty Trust, and we couldn’t have done it without Andrew’s parents, who encouraged us to look into (and ultimately, pay into) Liberty Trust, more years ago than I can remember. We started off well, making reasonable payments, but then various changes forced us to tighten our belts and our budgets, and sometimes we were only paying in $10 a week. Andrew’s parents, however, were also making contributions on our behalf, for many years.