This time last year, we had just suddenly returned from Thailand six months earlier than planned. We were confused, jet-lagged, homesick for Thailand, and all around freezing our tails off. So, the 2010 Christmas letter didn’t happen. Let’s start off this one with a recap for the history books!

We visited Thailand in Jan. 2010 with The SOLD Project to learn about preventing child exploitation; we fell in love with the work and were thrilled to accept communications jobs with SOLD. To raise financial support, we road-tripped for three months from Grand Rapids to LA to Philadelphia (8,000+ miles in a Honda Civic!). Thailand was amazing. For lots of gushing about our love for the country, the Thai people, and our work with The SOLD Project, browse our 2010 blog archives. But, a few months after moving to Thailand, Heather severely herniated a disc and required surgery in Bangkok and (long story short) we had to move back to the U.S.

When we returned to the U.S. last December, “the plan” was to settle in Philadelphia. We lived with family for six months while Heather looked for work, before eventually deciding to move back to Grand Rapids. We’re pleased with our decision. We’re actually just a couple houses down from our old apartment! It’s a short walk to downtown, and we live a few blocks away from Heather’s brother. Our upstairs neighbors seem nice, but sometimes we think they stomp around like cave trolls at 5 a.m. just to mess with us. Mozno (our mustachioed cat) is back with us, adorable as ever and dealing with full-on abandonment issues (we think it’s related to driving him 16 hours across the country and leaving him with Heather’s parents for a year), so he poops on the couch if we leave for a weekend. We’re working on it.

Michael loves working for The SOLD Project as the Communications Director. He works from home as champion of SOLD’s messaging and brand—writing emails, designing online and print materials, managing social media and developing strategic partnerships—all to help ensure that the kids we serve in Thailand have the resources they need to avoid exploitation. Heather is an admissions counselor at nearby Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, which helps pay the bills and brings more enjoyment than she anticipated. She still works part-time with SOLD, too, writing for the blog (thesoldproject.com/blog) and doing donor relations work. We’re planning a return visit to Thailand next year. Anyone want to join us?

We love our community of friends in Grand Rapids and we love being back at our church. We’re in a small group of other couples that we’re getting to know, and we’re starting to make friends who are younger and have been married less time than us, which is weird!

We traveled to Maine this summer to visit Mike’s grandparents at their summer home (our first trip up since we’ve been married), and Heather ate her first lobster (mmmm!). We went to the opening night double feature of the final Harry Potter movie and waited for five hours in the wrong line. We read “The Hunger Games” trilogy and you should, too. (Seriously. So addicting.) We hosted Mike’s parents, Heather’s sister, and some friends for a visit here in GR, and look forward to hosting you (yes, you) whenever you choose to visit. We make Thai curry for dinner at least twice a week. That is not an exaggeration.

Much love,

Michael & Heather Colletto

Speaking of our work, one of the many things I’ve done over the past few months is secure a relationship with Philanthroper.com. The SOLD Project was first featured on the site in August and is being featured again today.

Philanthroper believes “a little helps a lot.” Every day, they tell the story of a different nonprofit and invite people to give $1 (or up to $10). Why? “So you can donate another $1 tomorrow. And another the next day,” says Philanthroper. “We’re trying to make doing good a habit.”

If you’re familiar with SOLD (and you should be!), you know $1 does help a lot. One dollar is the cost of one day of public schooling for an at-risk child in Thailand. $1/day changes the whole story for these kids—instead of dropping out of school, they’re receiving an education; instead of falling into exploitation, they’re rising from poverty and pursuing their dreams.

Head on over to Philanthroper.com and check out all the nice things they say about The SOLD Project and, if you’d like, give $1. A little helps a lot.

—Michael Colletto

This to me as Mike tried to crawl out of my desperate grasp on the couch. It has been a particularly slow day in the job-hunting world, which led, as usual, to EW.com browsing, which, at its worst, leads to some juicy celebrity gossip at popeater.com That’s usually about the time I say, “Mi-ike…” and plead with him to regale me with tales of his oh-so-productive workday.

Somewhere in the last two weeks, I official hit an Unemployment Wall. And it has not been pretty. I’ve been officially looking for eight months and had four interviews in less than two weeks. They were exciting opportunities and the interviews were unbelievably affirming. I left each one walking with my head held high. But almost none of them called. Or returned my followup calls and emails.  I’m fairly sensitive–at this, I think my friends will laugh and say, “Ya think?!“–and it hasn’t been easy to handle the endless ebb and flow of hopefulness and disappointment. There were some bumps and bruises along the way that were both a part of the game (I can’t believe I wrote that in my first cover letter!) and deeply personal (I’m looking at you, Jackets). But I’ve learned a lot about myself, my goals, and my “strengths and weaknesses.”

If you know my husband, Mike, you know he is the frustratingly perfect picture of patience. He sits next to me when the rejection emails come in. He sits next to me when they don’t. He smiles patiently as I read the job description aloud before each interview. (And only mentioned this “adorable” nervous tic of mine in Month Seven of the search.) He edits my cover letters. He listens to me go back and forth with each follow-up: “Should I call? I should call. I called on Tuesday. No, it’s too soon. I won’t call. I’ll email. No, a call would be better. Okay, email is it.” The other day I was walking out the door for another interview after a particularly disappoint letdown the day before. He grabbed my shoulders and said, ‘Heather, you just work too hard and care too much,” and it made me laugh so hard I smiled all the way into the interview.

My Unemployment, by the Numbers

8 – number of months on the hunt

51 – cover letters & resumes sent

6 – pounds I’ve gained from emotional eating

7 – number of cities I interviewed with: NYC, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, San Francisco, Cedarville, Grand Rapids

1 – interviews in Philadelphia

5 – number of weeks that passed before I finally figured out my personal recruiter had been fired from the company and was not applying me to all those jobs after all

$273.56 – dollar amount of fraudulent charges on our credit card shortly after I applied for a job on Craigslist

1 – number of interview outfits I have post-Thailand

1 – number of interview outfits I daydream about burning in a trash can when I finally land a job

1 – number of interview outfits I probably won’t burn because I need that outfit for my new job

When I was in seventh grade, there was a bomb discovered in the school bathroom. Right after Columbine, there were a lot of lockdown drills and this one was for real. Sometimes I think about the kid that put it there. I assume he is still in jail, and, in this weird way, it seems strange that the rest of us went on living our lives–fighting in Iraq, going to graduate school, buying things of Craigslist–while he sits in jail.

A few weeks before my wedding, there was a shooting in the Omaha mall in the store where my mom had been countless times in her determined quest to find a perfect mother-of-the-bride dress. It was strange to hear CNN describe the scene of the murders–the atrium, the grand piano, the escalators–and see it all in my memory. Not the way you read about a pond in a book and picture the pond you grew up fishing on. But, like, really there.

Today I went to lunch at Division and Fulton Street, the official center of Grand Rapids. It’s a half-mile down the street from where I live and I must confess that I drove. I was running late for my lunch date with Sally because we had driven down US-131 to pick up an IKEA chair we found on Craigslist. After lunch–where Sally told me about a shooting at the fireworks show we had watched a few nights before–I drove down I-196 to a job interview. When I got home, Mike and I had dinner on our new screened-in porch, coaxing our cat from the kitchen and into the sunlight. He was suspect because he could hear traffic and is afraid of the car noises.

So we noticed the helicopter noises immediately, expecting them to send the cat running. But they didn’t. It was the high-pitched sirens that pressed his ears back in distaste. And the sirens kept coming. And coming. And they were close. Close enough that I went inside to Google what was going on. I read a headline on the local news channel’s website that a man was on the run after killing seven people in two homes. The headline said there may have been a ‘credible sighting.’ Not what I was looking for.

Then Michael taught me how to look up real news up checking Twitter for hashtags of ‘siren’ and ‘Grand Rapids,’ but there was nothing. I even wondered for a moment if my brother was okay, then realized it would be silly to call him up every time I heard sirens. The police station and firehouse are a five-minute walk away.

Later that night, I got a text from a friend I’d seen earlier in the day about the murderer and realized I’d forgotten to lock the doors. I sent Mike to the deadbolts as I pulled up the local news channel site again and discovered what the earlier sirens were for.

The ‘credible sighting’ was indeed real, and the police chased the suspect through town. (If you ever want to see me get fired up, ask me how I feel about police chases or tangled clothing hangers.) They chased him through downtown and he fired shots randomly at Division and Fulton, hitting a pedestrian, and I thought of the salmon asparagus omelette I’d eaten while I overlooked that intersection. He flew down US-131 into oncoming traffic and I thought about how that must have been especially troublesome because of that lane closure I experienced earlier that morning. The suspect abandoned his vehicle and ran into a home, holding a few people hostage.

I don’t think I would have even clicked on that news story if it were some city I didn’t know. If I’m being perfectly honest. But, today, it’s my home city, my lunch date, my Craigslist errand.

Tonight, my heart is hurting. For the boy in junior high who is still in prison while I interview for jobs. For the pedestrian at the busy intersection. For the children that were killed and won’t get to sit on a screened-in porch on a sunny summer evening, laughing at the scared-ey cat in the doorway.

And for the suspect, who shot himself in the head as I typed this blog post.

Today, there was too much “not yet.”

After that, we weren’t really sure how to go looking for a church. We’re not fans of “shopping” for churches, but we also weren’t really sure how else to find one. We visited one on someone’s recommendation, but it just wasn’t for us. I had grown up in a big church, which definitely had its advantages, but we were also recently spoiled by the tight-knit community of a home church.

Vineyard North was the second church we visited, and we found it via a Google search. We walked in the front door and were welcomed right away. Vineyard is famous for its friendliness. If you have been there only a few times, you will get welcomed by someone during the service. They have people seriously trained to spot newbies and make them feel welcome. That first morning, they were serving Kahlua coffee and the church’s monthly newsletter featured a picture of Obama and an essay from the (very Republican) lead pastor pleading for unity among believers post-election. Yes on both counts!

I think a lot of the details about why Vineyard was (and, we believe, still is) the right place for us is a plethora of spiritual moments and lessons that would be hard and maybe even inappropriate to explain on a blog. Do you ever meet new people or a new city or even new music and you think, “I didn’t realize it until now, but I think this is really what I need for this season in my life“? It was kind of like that.

God knew (when we didn’t) that we were only going to be in Grand Rapids for less than a year. He put us in a church that we felt a true part of in a matter of weeks. In no time at all, we were spending evenings with Vineyard’s pastors and their family. It was Pastor Matt that really got Vineyard as a whole excited about SOLD. Vineyard was beginning a series of (gasp!) sexuality and Matt asked me to speak in a service the issue of sex trafficking. That led into a fundraising event for SOLD, where we gained student sponsors and our first personal supporters for our work with SOLD. (Andy, you signed up right after shaking our hands and now we count you as a dear friend. You didn’t know what you were getting into, did you?!)

Pastors Mike and Lauren became good friends as well, inviting us into their home for many long conversations about God–and trafficking and travel and wine and writing and then some more about God. Mike and Lauren led us to a new friend named Susan, who was beginning to feel stirred to do something about sex trafficking.  After a long coffee date at Panera Bread with us, she probably left knowing more than she wanted to!  She held a fundraiser downtown that raised enough money to finish the Resource Center; she ended up traveling to Thailand with Lauren a year later. Susan now speaks to groups in Grand Rapids about the sex industry in Thailand.

When we returned to Vineyard last month, we were greeted at the door and someone handing us the new June newsletter. I glanced down at it and was greeted by two familiar faces:  US! The poor greeter didn’t know what to do when I stopped the flow of front door traffic and turned to Mike, pointing.  “Hey, look! It’s us!”

There we were, a little paragraph about how we had come to Vineyard, then moved to Thailand, and now we were welcomed back. There was even a note about us staying at Mike and Lauren’s house while we found a place to live.

Because we have moved so much, we haven’t really thought much about having a “home church.” Neither of the churches we had grown up played a part in our non-profit work. And we knew Bratislava was fleeting. In fact, for us, the whole idea of home in general has been fleeting.

The decision we made a few months ago to move back to GR was a difficult one. We were not interested in another move. But, like we wrote earlier, we were stirred by a visit back here in March, and it was a stirring that didn’t go away as we began to seek God’s will in the matter through prayer and conversation with friends.

Seeing the welcome in the newsletter and the sense of peace I felt during that first service back made Grand Rapids feel like what we never really expected it to. It feels like home.

Vineyard News: June 2011

In chronological order, we’d like to extend a public thank you to the following awesome people:

• Eric and Vicki Miller*
• Vaughan and Donna Wenzel*
• A variety of cheap, seedy hotels in the desert
• D’Aun and Roy Goble
• Abbie and Josh Cobb
• Autumn West / Jeremy and Jo Pheasant
• Our Honda, Mama Martini
• Brittany and Andrew Peterson**
• John and Kim Patton
• Daron and Ashley Day**
• Seth and Sally Herman
• Rachel and Kevin Carey
• Angie and Jamin Ferner**
• David and Amy Wenzel
• Leslie and Chris VanHart
• Chuck and Patty Colletto
• Mike and Lauren Befus**

* – You even let us bring our cat with us!

** – We either set off your fire alarm and/or broke one of your glasses in our effort to make you a ‘thank you’ breakfast. Sorry again.

And a special thank you to Miss Lily Ferner, age five, who let us sleep in her pink bedroom for an entire five months. You were the hostest with the mostest and we love you very much!

Mike spent much of last week working on a big report for the SOLD board meetings in LA this week.  It was cool to see on paper all of the things he has accomplished for SOLD in the past year–and the new projects in the works. There have been a lot of changes on the board this past year, and SOLD is excited about taking some new and big steps to continue to grow. And we–thanks to our monthly supporters–are insanely blessed to be a part of it. And, while I continue to search for work, we have also been blessed with enough freelance writing/editing work to help supplement our income in the meantime.

In March, I was approached about interviewing for two jobs at the same organization, and I was the only candidate interviewed. So, suffice to say, it looked promising that I would get a job.

So, as the temperature warmed and a job seemed imminent, Michael made a declaration:

“I will not shave my beard until you get a job.”

Harmless enough. But, for reasons I best not get into in a public forum, the aforementioned job opportunities unexpectedly disappeared, and Michael was left with a beard.  And, through several dozen cover letters, resumes, and interviews, he continued to grow his beard. It slowly morphed from a trim beard to a shaggy hipster get-up that actually fit in quite well in downtown Philly. Over three months later, not one hair on his chinny-chin-chin has been trimmed.

(“You crazy kids will do anything for a video montage,” my best friend, Brittany, said in the middle of all this.)

My feelings on my husband’s loyalty and commitment come and go. Most of the time, even as people tease him, I am moved by his utter commitment to something he said he would do–as silly as it was–and proud of his gesture of “solidarity,” as he calls it. Other times, I look at my husband and just see my own failure all over his face.

On the drive to Grand Rapids a few weeks ago, we decided he was going to shave the beard when we arrived. After all, it had been our trip out here back in March that had inspired his decision. But, only a few miles down the road, Mike declared that he had come too far to merely shave it off for “a new start.” We compromised and decided that a new apartment was just as exciting as a new job.

A few days ago, we were at the Befus’ house during a playdate. A neighbor’s little girl came into the kitchen where Mike was standing, alone. She ran in and looked at Mike, stopping dead in her tracks.

“Hey,” Mike said.  She stared at him, frozen.

Then, after a long pause, she slowly backed out of the room. Inexplicably, it was she who mumbled, “Sorry I scared you.”

Today we signed the lease and put a security deposit on our new home. It’s in our old neighborhood, and we’re really excited about it. Which means (drumroll, please) that it is time to shave the beard.

And, yes, Brittany.  There will be a video to come.

Our new home, the bearded fellow, and a lease

]]> http://drivenbyfreedom.com/2011/06/marraige-and-other-vows-of-passion/feed/ 1 http://drivenbyfreedom.com/2011/06/for-such-a-time-as-this/ http://drivenbyfreedom.com/2011/06/for-such-a-time-as-this/#comments Sat, 11 Jun 2011 02:48:26 +0000 collettostories http://drivenbyfreedom.com/?p=1169 Since arriving in Grand Rapids a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been house-sitting for Lauren and Mike Befus, friends of ours who also pastor at our church. Recently, the Befus family got some chickens to keep in their yard. They also have a dog–a four-year old Goldendoodle named Cody.  Neither Mike or I ever had a dog and, contrary to popular belief, I did not have chickens in my Nebraska backyard growing up.

One morning last week, I pulled on some sweats and let the dog out the sliding back door. Half-asleep, I shuffled towards my shoes on so I could let the chickens out of their coop and into their fenced-in “run” area.  Suddenly, I heard a lot of squawking and barking and saw a chicken outside fly past the window my peripheral vision. Wait, what?

Wide awake, I booked it outside to discover that the chickens had busted the door off their coop and were roaming free.  Well, maybe not roaming. Cody, well-behaved as he is, couldn’t help but chase them. There was general chaos and running and shooing, but, in a matter of minutes, three out of the four chickens were back in their run–and happy to be there.  One of them, however, was entirely MIA.

By this time, the commotion had brought Michael outside, too.  (And probably all the neighbors.)  We began drilling each other with questions: How fast do chickens run? Where do they like to hide? Will they come back on their own? Can they fly?  With each shouted “I don’t know!” that we exchanged, we became increasingly exasperated, each of us disgusted with the other that we had not covered “Chickens’ Flying Habits 101″ in our pre-marital counseling sessions.

It had poured rain the night before and everything was soaked, especially the dog. I threw him in the garage with a quick apology before marching up and down the street in search of The Missing Chicken. Unable to resist the urge to mumble “Here, chicken, chicken” as I went, I flip-flopped down the middle of the neighborhood street, wishing I had some coffee, while Mike scoured the bushes around the house.

It suddenly occurred to me that Cody the Dog might be the best one to find the missing chicken. I sneaked him out of the garage like a (still very wet) criminal.

“Cody, where’s the chicken?” I asked with all the high-pitched excitement I use when I say “Where’s your ball?” He took off running. In a matter of minutes, we heard squawking and barking coming from the bushes at the back of the house. I’m pretty sure he was on the way to get his ball when he heard or smelled the chicken. I’m pretty sure he simply lucked out.

The chicken was way back there in the bushes, and we needed Cody to chase him out.  “Sorry, Chicken!” we yelled as we sent the half-retriever into the bushes.  There was general scuffling and, sure enough, a burst of panicked white feathers emerged from the wet bushes.

“Okay, good boy, Cody!  Now sit! Sit, Cody!” we shouted. But there is just not way you can ask a hunting animal to not chase a chicken right in front of him. Not that we found anyway.  “No, Cody!  Stop!”

All the way around the house we went: us chasing dog, dog chasing chicken, chicken chasing his happy place. Around and around, until Cody chased the chicken right back into the bushes where we found him. We wrapped our arms around the dog in his momentary confusion and grew quiet. The three of us, intertwined in an embrace, listened for the chicken in the bushes.  Not a peep. I was pretty sure it had dropped dead from sheer panic.

But a few twigs snapped and I got the courage to go into the bushes after him.  After some (literal) back and forth, I cornered him and was in a perfect position to simply bend over and grab him.  But I couldn’t do it.

See, I have this bird phobia.

“But it’s a chicken!” Mike “encouraged” from a safe distance away.

“I can’t do it!” I shouted, panic rising in my throat. “I can’t!”  I imagined the chicken pecking me and a burst of feathers and, people, my bird phobia is pretty legit.

“Nebraska up!”  Mike shouted back.

“What?”

“Get your Nebraska on!  You can do it, babe. Nebraska up!”

For such a time as this. Just like I secretly think God has made me tall to someday save a child from the window of a burning building that no one of average height can reach–I’ve had lots of practice with similar situations, like old ladies and grocery stores and jars of pickles–I realized that maybe I had grown up in Nebraska for this very moment. The chicken needed me to save the day and, with God as my witness–

“Just do it!” Mike shouted.

Gritting my teeth, I took a deep breath and grabbed the chicken as soundly as I could. He struggled to get away, but I didn’t let go.  I held on tight until he finally gave up and I lifted him above the bushes for Mike to see.

“Now help me get out of here,” I said, anxious to put the stupid bird back in his cage.

To which my God-given husband replied: “Hold on, let me get my camera!” And up the porch steps he ran, abandoning me.

When he came back, camera in-hand, Mike was met with both a squawking chicken and a squawking wife.

“But this is exactly the sort of thing we have a camera for!” he countered.

For such a time as this, indeed.

Well, the city didn’t take too well to that. Grand Rapids resident Rob Bliss got together 5,000 of his closest friends to write a sort of letter to the editor.  Bliss has made a name for himself in Grand Rapids with city-wide events, like a giant pillow fight, a zombie walk, and, most recently, a record-breaking release of paper airplanes downtown for the 2009 ArtPrize.   (20,000+ people attended the release of over 100,000 airplanes. See the official 2009 video here.)

The video is a city-wide music video of “American Pie,” and it takes the viewer through downtown in one single shot. Roger Ebert called the video “the greatest music video ever made” on his Chicago Sun-Times blog. Yesterday, it was the #10 most watched video on youTube. The Today Show is featuring it tomorrow or Wednesday, and it has been covered by the India Times, CNN, The Daily News (UK), NBC’s Inside Edition, and more.

Says Bliss:

This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” We disagreed strongly, and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy we all feel is growing exponentially, in this great city. We felt Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song about death, was in the end, triumphant and filled to the brim with life and hope.”

Check out the video here: