alaska or bust

the mountains are calling and i must go.

ben and i are moving back to alaska. 

i have not written anything on my blog in months. this semester has passed by too quickly.

back in february we had a small church from fairbanks, ak contact us and ask for ben's resume.

fairbanks, being the last place i ever wanted to live again.{i'm an anchorage girl at heart}.

but god had other plans.

the church flew us up in march. we interviewed with the church the entire weekend. i had an interview that saturday with a local accounting firm, i received a job offer in the interview {which never happens in real life}. 

ben received a job offer from the church by monday, and we had found a great real estate agent.

so by the end of just one weekend we both had job offers and a potential house.

god gave me an overwhelming peace about moving back to fairbanks.

 i was {am} actually super excited about returning. 

since i moved away 8 years ago, i have discovered some dear friends {whom i wish i had met when i actually lived there}. i had a sense of community in the weekend i visited that i did not have the first time. 

and let's face it, over the past 9 years i have become an alaskan girl. 

when i first moved to alaska back in 2004, ben was such a completely different person in alaska then in the states during college. i asked him what he did with the ben i knew from school, to which he replied "this is a part of me too". over the past nine years i have learned the ways of the alaskan life, but more importantly, i have grown to love them. i already enjoyed camping, hiking, climbing, canoeing, kayaking, etc. but, living in such a remote place on the planet pushed me to limits i never imagined going. over the years i have learned that i can push myself farther and harder than i thought possible. i have learned how to cope with the long, dark, cold winters. i have learned to enjoy every day of precious summer. i have come to love fishing and hunting.

 when i see people walking around in hellyhansen gear and xtra tuffs it feels like home.

alaska feels like home.

we will start our journey back to alaska in 9 days.

 i will be writing about our road trip back and our adventures in the last frontier.