Florida...The First Time

Written on May 5th - Sitting in our living room in January 2008 we started searching online for Christian schools in Florida. From Sarasota to Miami. Steve filled out about a dozen applications. One to Calvary Christian Academy in Ft. Lauderdale. The application was sooo long and intense. But, he kept working at it. Then we learned the position that he was applying for had been filled. For some reason (a God reason) Steve was still focused on that school. I would find him on the school website many evenings and we had a joke about it. I would come in the room, find him on the website and tell him to stop looking at “cca eagles.” Titus was born in July 2008. We had struggled over the previous months to come to terms with the fact that we were not going to Florida. Although, I never did the nursery. I had this gut feeling that we weren’t going to be raising our baby in PA. We both would say, “if it’s going to happen it will happen fast.” We had no idea. About two weeks after Titus was born we got ‘the call.’ I was with Titus in the living room when a call came that I didn’t recognize. I let the machine get it. Then I went into the nursery where our answering machine was to listen to the message that had been left. Rob Lofthouse from Calvary Christian Academy in Ft. Lauderdale wondering if Steve would be interested in a teaching position there. I went to the computer and googled the school. When the cca eagles website came up I was shocked. We knew we had to go to see the school and to interview. A month after Titus was born we packed up and flew to south Florida. After an intense interview, Steve was offered the job. Wow, here we were being offered a job to move our new family to a new place so Steve could start a new job. We went to the Saturday night church service and during the worship (singing) time I felt that this was where we should be. We went home. We prayed. We discussed. We felt we couldn’t turn it down. We weren’t confident. A few weeks later would move. With a newborn baby, we packed our house, sold our car, Steve told his principal at the time about the situation and told him he wouldn’t be coming back. The weekend of Steve’s 30th birthday, in the middle of a hurricane, we drove to Florida. We knew no one there.