A Polish Blessing

My husband spent the first twelve weeks of this new job out of town for training. Luckily he was home on weekends, so I wasn't completely by myself for this entire time. This twelve weeks proved to be a good test for me. I was very nervous about having the kids myself for such long periods of time. Not that I couldn't handle it, but I think because I'm gone most of the time, when I come home, I get swarmed. After a tiring day at work, sometimes its just too much.

It taught me a lot though. I was able to handle it very well. I had the proper mind set to come home and start dinner right away, get through the homework, baths, and then too bed.

This job was looking so good. My husband thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing

About 7 months prior to this, in the midst of job changes and being laid off, our babysitter found out she was pregnant. Luckily, she was due in June, so we were able to line up our weekend babysitter (a high school student) to watch them for the summer months. I had every expectation that Sarah would be coming back to us after 6 or 12 weeks. We had very open discussions about the summer with her.

At some point around April she mentioned that she was considering looking for a position closer to home. She had been driving about 40 minutes to our house every day and in the winter through lots of snow! She didn't want to bring her new baby that far every day, let alone through the snow.

The child care discussions started again.

Could I quit in the summer of 2010? My husbands job was paying overtime... we started looking at the possibilities. There was just no way. BUT, this was the closest we had ever been.

We started looking for other babysitters, but it seemed that in two years the cost of care for 5 children had gone up. We quickly landed on getting an au pair because it was the most inexpensive route for child care, ensured that someone was here when the kids were sick, and no matter how much snow fell, she would be here.

I've already spoke about the matching process for locating an au pair. Considering you are inviting someone to come live with you for a year, conducting interviews and exchanging emails is hardly enough information to know if someone will really work. I really started to pray as we looked for an au pair that we would find someone who meshed with our family. From our previous experiences, we were determined to make this year work with whomever we chose.

In order to meet our mid-summer goal for arrival of our au pair, we had to match with someone by the end of May. Cultural Care takes your application and tries to systematically match you with candidates that meet the qualifications you are looking for. We were given three candidates initially and contacted all of them via email. What I quickly found is that having five kids was just a tad intimidating. I had exchanged emails with two young ladies from South Korea a few times to find out after a few days that they did not think watching five kids was for them.

The other option with Cultural Care is to look through the list of candidates that are not currently matched or potential matches for another host family. You generally have a little bit of information about them and some of them even include a video about themselves. Once you request that they become a potential match for your family, then you are able to see their entire application. I found a young lady from Poland whose father was a Baptist minister. From what I could see, she looked like she might be a good candidate. This was the first and only candidate that I had specifically requested to be a potential candidate for us, the rest had been supplied by Cultural Care's matching process.

When I first began communicating with Iza, the polish young lady, via email, she informed me that she was really hoping to be with a family who had girls. She was also a little surprised with us having 5 kids. She immediately asked us about our relationship with Jesus and the church we attended. For me this was a good sign, if she was asking about it so up front, I knew it must be important to her.

I spoke with her on the telephone, as is required by hosting an au pair, and what really stood out to me was her sense of humor and spunk. I really enjoyed speaking with her and her English was pretty good! I asked if I could speak with her in a couple of days. The next phone call (you are required to have 2), my husband and I both spoke with her. My husband thought she had a great personality as well.

Little did I know at the time, that Iza was also praying for a good host family. As we spoke with her she prayed about coming to stay with us. She had been waiting nearly 2 months after she put in her application with Cultural Care with absolutely no potential matches to even consider. She had just started to think, "okay Lord, is this what I'm really supposed to do?" Our email arrived in her inbox the next day!

As a blessing to both of us, God had his hand in bringing us together. Iza took on the challenge of watching 5 children, 4 of them being boys. We matched with her and planned for her arrival date to be the first week of August.

In hindsight, as it is of course now January, Iza was a true blessing from the Lord. She has been a great temporary addition to our family and has been wonderful with our kids!! She is very dedicated both to working for us and to her relationship with the Lord. We are very blessed to know her!