The Hawaii Admission

At last, here it is...the post containing everything you always wanted to know about our upcoming move to Hawaii, but were too bored to ask.



The Exposition

In February I received an email from the professor I had worked for at Wisconsin-Platteville. She informed me that the department had decided not to hire any adjunct instructors for the upcoming year. Thus, I was out of a job for 2007-2008. For three months I searched job postings and contacted friends in the hopes of finding something new, but to no avail. Then, in May I received an email from a former professor at BYU who had relocated to BYU-Hawaii. He invited me to come to Laie to fill a one-year instructor slot in the history department. After much debate, soul-searching, and a few tears, we decided to accept. It was a difficult decision to give up on returning to our friends in Madison, some of whom have moved on, but most are still there. Since Kaddi and I have been married, Madison has been the only place that ever felt like home.

The Negotiation

We had thought that deciding to move again would be the hardest part, but finalizing the arrangements has been even worse. The time difference between Hawaii and Thailand made communication difficult. We started the process late in the season. I have a feeling the BYUH bureaucracy moves slowly at the best of times, but during the summer I think the entire administration takes a collective siesta. The paperwork requesting a General Authority was submitted too late and missed the July deadline. This meant I couldn't be interviewed until August, which in turn meant that I could not get Board approval until October. Without this approval the department can only offer me a semester contract instead of the one-year contract I had been promised. At one point the administration got word I was not coming at all and gave our housing unit to another family. We leave in less than a week and still don't know where we'll be living.

The Interview

Two weeks after arriving in California I finally received notification that I had been granted an audience. Instead of the free trip to Salt Lake I was hoping for, this would be an interview by satellite. Worst of all, I had to shave my beard - the source of my Mack Strate Mojo. I emerged from the bathroom feeling like freshly shorn spring lamb. Kaddi helped ease my anxiety by laughing hysterically and saying my face looked bald. I put on my suit, drove up to a run-down area of Sacramento and found the Video-conferencing business located in the back of a dilapidated office complex. They seated me at the end of a long table. On the other side of the room were two televisions. One displayed a conference room in Salt Lake. The other showed a tall, slightly awkard-looking, bald-faced white guy that turned out to be me. As I watched myself on the screen I noticed that the camera was at a slight angle, so that even when I sat straight up in the chair, on the TV I appeared to have my head tilted to one side. So while I waited for Elder Jensen to arrive I tried unsuccessfully to adjust my posture so that on the television screen it would look like I was sitting straight up. Finally, I gave up and just tried to appear as normal as possible.

After all that I was in a perfect state of mind for fielding Elder Jensen's first question: What is your testimony of the restored gospel?

The Disclosure

Although we had decided back in June that we would accept the offer to go to Hawaii, we put off telling the kids for as long as possible. After Thailand I didn't have the heart to reveal that they wouldn't be returning to their elementary school in Madison, which they both loved. I felt bad for Jake (who will be in grade five this year) who has already attended three different schools and been homeschooled for a year. A few days ago when I was home with the kids I decided to bite the bullet and explain that I had a new job, which required us to move to Hawaii.

Silence.

I tried to cushion the blow by explaining the Hawaii was a very cool place with warm weather, lots of beaches, places to surf and skateboard, and that I was sure lots of people would come to visit us. No one spoke for what seemed like a long time. Finally Meg said "Well, mom better buy a lot more sunscreen."

There was none of the weeping and wailing that I had expected. Like Kaddi, Jake seems resigned to his fate as a wanderer. When I pressed him for a reaction to the news, all he said was. "I'm not surprised. We move all the time."

So there it is. Season two of 301NIB will take place on the island of Oahu as the Strate's once again spend 301 nights in a new exotic locale. Although the days leading up to our transition seem a little bleak as we all contemplate the unknown, I'm confident things will work out in Hawaii just as well as they did in Thailand.

Well...hopefully a little better than in Thailand.