House Hunters International...what???

We have you all sorts of confused, I believe, with my Facebook post about being on House Hunters International, so let me give you the 411.

A year and a half ago, when we decided to move to Zambia for a year, my crazy hubs decided to email HHI on a whim and tell them of our plans. It has always been a favorite show of ours-love seeing all the different places around the world and types of housing and culture! Never in a million years did we think they would actually contact us...  About 3 months ago though, much to our surprise, we got an email from a casting director.  He wanted to Skype us and hear more about our story.  We told him about our plan to adopt and to help our friends organization called GiveLife do some agricultural development and assist their preschool, as well as do some medical outreaches with an American doctor at the Gospelink Bible College.  He was very interested in the adoption part because of the difficulty of adopting from here and thought that the higher ups at HHI would be very interested as well.  And come to find out, they were!!!  We got a phone call about a month after that telling us we were a go!  Fast forward to last night where we Skyped with the lady who will be producing our show.  They will be coming here May 1st-May 4th to film.

Now to the major questions we have been asked by many, one being, "are you moving to Zambia permanently???"  And the quick answer to that is, "no."  The long answer is this, we found out much to our dismay, that like pretty much all "reality" television, House Hunters is kind of staged.  Yes, we were devastated, just like many we talked to about this. But I do hold to the fact that our general story is true, so hopefully they all are.  We really did move here and the reasons stated are true and not fabricated in any way! But we obviously already live here and so the house we live in now will be one that we visit and the one that we end up choosing, so that's where it gets a little iffy.  :)  Our stuff will be moved out so we can come "look" at this house like it is empty.  We will also look at 2 other houses just like the typical show format.  They will also film us doing some things in the area, like going to Sunday market in Lusaka, the animal park, the local Chongwe market,  Mickey playing basketball, etc. And they were interested in filming me at the preschool and Mickey doing some farming or some medical outreach.  2nd, some were surprised to learn HHI would actually want to film here because there is only modest housing.  Yes, our apartment is definitely what you might call modest, but there are actually really nice homes in Lusaka, and they will extend the search there.  The debate will be between us living here close to work and friend, with cheaper rent, or living in the city with higher rent.  3rd, we don't know an air date yet.  They told us probably early fall of this year, as soon as we know, we will tell you!  Ha! I seem to be saying that a lot lately.  4th, we did fill them in on the latest with our adoption.  This is what they want the crux of our story to be about and so we didn't know if they would still want to film us if we really don't get to adopt in the end.  When we talked to them a few months ago, we really thought the adoption was for sure going to happen.  Now hopefully, we will get the answer we both want, and that is we have the boys and it is a very happy ending!  But none the less, they are going to come film anyways, and will focus more on the work we have been doing over here if our adoption does not go through.  5th, do you get paid? Yes, there is a small stipend.  They actually want you to use it to fly back home for the back story, but we told them that it would only cover the cost of 1 ticket, and since we are only here a short time, it really isn't worth it to fly all the way back home for 1 day of filming, and they were cool with that.  So then it is just ours, which we plan on using to further our ministry here in some way.  This is all a gift from God anyways and we want to give it back to Him!  6th and final, I am super nervous and of course Mickey is super excited.  So our life goes usually.  To be honest, there are times when my fear of it all makes me want to not do it.  But when it comes down to it, if one person watching the show is encouraged to adopt, or thinks wow, they moved to Zambia to help people, I wonder what that is all about, and somehow us being on this show points one person to God, then I am all in.  So, please excuse my lack of acting skills, or if I don't look right on TV, or say something stupid, we just want God to be glorified in all of this.  (even though we were told we can't mention God, that's another story)  We are hoping our reasons for being here will be apparent enough to break that rule!!!

Hope this helped, thanks for all the interest and support.  We should be back home by the time it airs, so might have to have a viewing party!!!