Why New Zealand?

Of all places I could be in at this point in time, why New Zealand? Why leave the Philippines?

Each immigrant has his/her own set of reasons for leaving their homeland and settling in a foreign country. For Howell and I, the following reasons capture the major chunk of the reasons why we chose to settle here:

Howell’s family

Papa Lui left the Philippines in 2007 and the whole family, except for Howell, left in 2009. I met the family once before we got married when I visited New Zealand in 2014. We did not have a lot of time to really get to know each other because of the distance. Admittedly, it is definitely difficult to get to know people through online chatting alone.

Apart from this, Howell missed a lot of time apart from them and we felt that for him to fully understand himself and his family, we need to take time to be closer to them in proximity. It is amazing how you can fit the puzzle pieces of a person’s personality by just knowing and being with his family. We believe that by spending time with them, it will be a good foundation for us to build a family of our own.

God’s call

Living abroad is definitely a big leap of faith and as a family, Howell and I discerned for our decision to leave before we left the country. We believe that at this time, God has a mission for us here in New Zealand that we cannot fulfill if we were some place else. The Lord, in His goodness, has called us here in fulfillment of His promises to us years before Howell and I even met. How we are to see that fulfillment is something that we will have to wait and see as it unfolds before us.

Financial Stability

This reason is attached to the previous reason I have specified: God’s call to us. I grew up in a family where my parents worked so hard to provide us with everything that we want and need to the point that I grew distant from them, all because I felt that there was so little time to spend with them for them to get to know me. We want the kind of family where we have the freedom to spend time with our future kids. In order to have that kind of family, we needed financial stability.

New Zealand is one of the countries where even their minimum wage is definitely good. Here, even though Howell is the only one working (as of the time being), we are able to live a fairly comfortable life. We are hoping that someday soon, I may also get a job here so we can save up and eventually attain the financial freedom we are going after.

Home for Street Vagrants

One of the things that we also want to accomplish with our financial freedom is building a home for street vagrants in the Philippines. We call them taong grasa back home. Most of them, apart from roaming the streets and being homeless, have already lost touch with reality. These are the people that we wanted to reach out to. So if we wanted to build our own family and this shelter for them too, we have got to have a lot of resources.

This is our vision. These are our personal reasons why we chose to leave.

So why New Zealand? Perhaps because it opened its doors for us. Perhaps because the grass may indeed be greener on the other side. We do not know what this country holds for us yet but we ought to find out soon.