How in the World Did We Get Here: Part 3

*****Ok, I lied – Part 4 is my favorite part!  There was too much to tell so here’s Part 3…or you can call it Part 2.5 if that makes you feel better…*****

Our time in Texas was HOT and, well, that about sums it up.  Good gravy…we’re still not convinced we could hack it down there as a permanent dwelling.

We lived with Wrex’s boss for three months while he learned the ins and outs of this plant.  He traveled to sales and watched and learned and calculated how to bid on cows and then got to follow them through the slaughter process to see if they made or lost money.

To be a cow buyer, you have to be able to evaluate livestock and, based on their weight and body condition, guesstimate how much they will yield (how many pounds of lean product the animal will produce), thus telling you how much you should buy one for, while also accounting for freight to get the animal to the plant. The cows have to fit the bid given out by the head cow buyer of the company, which he bases on several factors – how much meat is trading for, how much meat the plant has on hand, how much they need, where they could get it cheaper if your barn is high that day, etc.  You also have to know what your competitors are willing to spend and how far to push them to make them pay more so you can pay less.  It’s quite complicated really…and FAST.  They sell a cow about every 30 seconds, so you have to be on your game!

Around October of that year, they felt like he’d learned enough to be turned loose on his own.   For the last month, they had all strategized and come up with a list of sale barns that he would be responsible for buying at.  We would then need to find a place to live that would be a somewhat central location for him to travel from.

It needed to be somewhere in this general area...
It needed to be somewhere in this general area…

The company gave him a week off to travel and find the community and home in which we’d like to live, so we loaded up and headed north.   For as big of an area as this appears to be on the map, there aren’t a ton of communities in all of that off-white goodness.

Before we started looking in person, we had narrowed it down (based on distance alone) to six primary towns.  We also knew that we really wanted to rent a house.  Once we were married, we had accumulated over $100,000 in debt between the two of us (student loans, cars, credit cards, etc.)  Yeah, THAT’S a post for another day, for sure.  The Lord totally spoke to us regarding our debt, as did Dave Ramsey, and we had spent the last four years of our marriage getting out of debt and we weren’t really ready to jump in again with a big ole house payment.  Plus, we weren’t completely sure this was where we’d permanently be for more than a year, so it just seemed like renting made the most sense.  Those two things were pretty much the only qualifications we had for the Lord…rent and close to the chosen sale barns.

We started our journey in Wray, Colorado where some friends of ours lived.  They did their best to find us some places to look at but we learned there, and moreso as the week went on, that there were very few rental properties in the area and the ones that were available, were for sale at the same time.  We weren’t completely excited about that because we’d have to hit the road when they wanted to show the place and then find somewhere else to move if it did sell.

We looked in several communities in Nebraska and a couple in Kansas, none of which had much to offer.  Everything we did find that was empty was for sale, so we started shifting our thinking a bit.  Quickly, renting didn’t even seem to be an option….so….what next?

I remember going back to our room that night and just being shell-shocked.  Buying a house hadn’t even been on our radar.  I thought we’d find decent enough rentals and just have to be picky on the community, sign the papers, pay some money, go get our things and move in.  Not exactly.  We just continually asked the Lord to show us the place…the town…the house…the plan.

On our third day in, we felt a little defeated.   There were no rentals out there and of the towns and houses that we had looked at that were for sale, none of them feel right.  I remember leaving this cute little place in Bird City, Kansas and thinking, I guess I just never imagined giving someone directions to my house and it being in town.  Yet, I never asked the Lord for anything different.

The only place on our list of six that we hadn’t looked was Holyoke, Colorado.  The day was drawing to a close…it was going to be a little after 4:00 pm when we pulled in, so we debated even going.  The friend we were staying with during this house-hunting expedition needed a transfer needle from the vet clinic and has asked if we could pick one up while we were out and about.  We hadn’t done that yet, so we figured we could drive into town, get a needle, take a peak around, feel confused/defeated and then head home to regroup…again…

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