Moving outside your Country

 

Like I said in my first post when I started to write, this blog will be created to help people or couples from outside United States to first feel welcome and then to feel comfortable with this new culture when visiting or coming to study in this country. Sometimes when talking about marriage, a huge change of culture can ruin the marital harmony between a couple, and that’s the reason I want to talk to this audience.

Let me start first talking about my experience. I arrived in United states almost 50 days ago. It was something I was expecting for a long time, even before the pandemic starts. Me and my wife spent a lot of time in the temple asking the Lord if that was his willing for us, and when we got a confirmation, we started our plans.

After many researches, we decided that BYUI was the right place for us. It would be fun to change from the giant city of Sao Paulo to this small town called Rexburg in the middle of some potatoes farms.

During that process of moving from one country to another, we had some good and bad moments. Sometimes me and my wife had different ideas of what would be the best option for us.

This week while in class we learned about family boundaries and I remember that my parents were very close to us and giving us many advice about moving to United States because they did that same path 20 years ago. This proximity from my parents to me and my Wife was something really special that helped us a lot.

However, with my wife’s family the opposite thing happened. The boundaries with them were a little bit rigid, and not so clear as with my parents. When we mentioned our desire to seek for a better education outside Brazil, they didn’t like that idea.

Although, I had the answer from the Lord that this could be something special in my life, and we came.

When we arrived, everything was amazing, we were surprised with how everybody is kind and gentile here in Rexburg, we also loved the temple, and the amount of chapels we have here. It was like a little piece of Zion

In few days, we met another couple who is also from Brazil. They had almost the same background as us, and now they moved to the same city and having the same resources, but something was different. Their relationship was going bad because of all the changes they were facing.

I started to think what we could do for them in order to help them feel good about all this moving and challenges. I remember that going to the Portuguese branch here in Rexburg was a huge blessing because we could learn from the spirit easily and make new friends. The branch president was another blessing because he did some goals with us, and that helped to motivate us.

So, my first though was to get this couple who was facing problems and bring them with us to the Portuguese branch. It took almost a month to convince them that this would be something good for them, but finally when they went, they learned that it was the best thing they could do.

During class this week I learned that we could use all the resources we have to feel comfortable, and that our family is one of the most important resource we have. Living outside our country can bring some challenges, but I’ learning that we can be one huge family and support one another.