God is good

I'm not sure how to keep this short, but still convey how grateful we are, and how miraculous God has been in our lives.

As you know from earlier this year, we have been anxiously awaiting what would happen for us this fall.  We've always known that Tom would have to get a PhD in order to make a career out of his field, but it has always been a mystery how that would all work out in an area that is so competitive.

Getting into a program turned out to be especially hard this year because of the economy.  I know it sounds like a great time to be going to school with all the unemployment, but universities are really hurting, and even some of the most prestigious schools are unable to fund as many (if any at all) graduate students as they would normally be able.

I am happy to say that the Lord has done amazing things for us.  A couple of months ago we did find out that Tom was accepted into one of his very top choices, University of Texas at Austin.  UT-Austin has recently acquired two of the top scholars in Tom's field, the two people Tom has been idolizing for years now.  It has been a dream of his to work with these two professors.

Ever since we (gratefully) found out he was accepted, we have been nervously waiting to hear about whether or not they would give him a fellowship to attend there.  Living in a foreign country for two years and no income has been rough, to say the least, and we've known all along that funding would be pretty necessary on our next journey.  So we have each been checking Tom's email roughly 300 times a day, for WEEKS.  

We have finally received the good news.

They have offered him a funding package, and we have officially accepted.

We feel like Heavenly Father rearranged the world for us.  We can suddenly look back on the last 8 years and know what the reasons were behind all of our promptings to do things the way we did.  They were all pieces to a big puzzle that is turning out to be an amazing PhD program that we only could have dreamed about.

We are overwhelmed that God has looked out for us so individually.  Little ol' us.  That's not to say things haven't been hard along the way, but we just kept believing that if we followed the path God was giving to us, that things would work out.

And it looks like they are.