To have a home of your own is something I will never take for granted.

(Disclaimer: this is  a longer post than usual, but read to the end because it’s the story of a miracle)

In preparation for the big move, Joshua and I moved out of our own apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma about 6 months prior to actually moving to Rio. We sold all our furniture and the majority of our things, put the remainder in storage and lived with some dear friends of ours until we moved. This we did to save money on rent and utilities in the US to have a better cushion to land on when we arrive in Rio.

We traveled to Rio in August of this year and took an entire week to look at apartments in preparation for our move in October. We looked at approximately 10 different apartments and found one…