This past year in Ohio has been our most rewarding and challenging one yet. Our years living abroad in the DR posed their challenges but we both went there with jobs awaiting us and were joining up with a well-established mission. When challenges arose our work and the community sharing in that work anchored us.
We chose Ohio with purpose; a community of friends had invited us, and we went with a purpose; to learn how to roast and how to start a business. The difference was there were no actual jobs waiting for us. We had a plan for jobs and talked about a mission but we had pushed out into deep water with nothing quite so tangible to anchor ourselves to.
Little by little ideas turned into reality. We found our roasting connection just 1 mile from our house at Angel Falls Coffee Company in the Highland Square neighborhood. We found work that paid the bills and eventually found even better work that paid the bills AND breathed life into us. Our mission was taking shape, the far shore was approaching, and the water was getting less deep and less dark.
All along the way our community of friends in Akron encouraged us and supported us (emotionally and financially). The difference between being our most defeating year and our most rewarding year were these people. We wish we could take each one of them with us to TX.
What we will carry with us is the confidence and excitement they gave for our plan to bring profoundly good coffee to Tyler.
And now we are pushing back out into deep water. The plan is there but there are still a lot of uncertainties. We knew before that we would be okay but now even more so we set out confident that we will reach another shore and it will be community, old and new, that will help us get there.
