The Beginning According to Neil

Hey guys! This is Neil (Jen's husband). Jen has asked me to write this post, which I was excited to do, as we want to start writing our posts together. After all, we're both doing the same job now. :)  I just wanted to give you all an update on our experience since we arrived here in Florida to become house parents.

I must say, these past 2 weeks have definitely been a whirlwind. We arrived at the Florida Baptist Children's Home in Lakeland, Florida on Sunday afternoon. I must say, coming to Florida from 20 degree weather was amazing. Since we got here, the weather has consistently been 70-80 degrees... so nice. Of course, I say that now, but it'll probably be a different story once summertime arrives, with temperatures in the upper 90’s with 100% humidity. Definitely NOT looking forward to that. For now, though, we're definitely enjoying the weather!

Once we arrived, we got set up in our temporary apartment adjacent to the campus. It’s a nice little 2 bedroom place above a garage that's entirely furnished. We’ll be staying here until we complete our training and the current house parents move out, which should be sometime this month. The campus here is beautiful. It's a huge property with mature trees all over the place, large homes (they refer to them as cottages), a chapel, a gym with a pool, and plenty of space for the kids to play. It's almost like a small resort. FBCH has owned this property for about 60 years now. Being the oldest of the six campuses means the cottages are somewhat outdated, but there are hopes to renovate them in the near future. Though they are a bit older, the cottages are very nice (and spacious). It really is a great place to live, and the kids are happy and well cared for here.

Our first week of work was crazy, filled with paperwork, doctor's appointments, driver's license transfers, training/safety videos, meeting our coworkers, etc. Each evening, after our time in the office, we would shadow the current house parents to get a feel for how they handle things; that time also gave us a great opportunity to get to know the kids. Now that we're done with the office work, we're shadowing house parents full-time, and are slowly starting to do things on our own with the house parents shadowing us and giving us advice on how to better handle things.

All in all, it has been a great couple of weeks. Next week, we'll be going on our first break (7 whole days!), which we're really excited about. Since we arrived, we've been going pretty much nonstop, from the time we wake up until the time we go to bed, so we're definitely ready for a break.

Until next time,
Neil