“Why don’t you do your PhD here at the University of Otago?”

I stared in wonder at the professor of sociology who looked up at me expectantly.  I dropped into a chair.

Why not do my PhD right here in New Zealand?  Arguments raced through my mind.  The population I wanted to study was located in the USA.  Didn’t it make more sense to return to my home in the USA and get my PhD there?  I asked him this question and he said, “Well, is it possible that the same or a similar population is here in New Zealand too?”

I had honestly never thought about it.  Suddenly, it began to make sense, the spirit call I’d experienced to come to this country some four years before this conversation and how my coming to New Zealand had become a reality just one year previous.  I had found a program called BUNAC (www.bunac.org) that helped US citizens up to age 35 come to New Zealand on a one-year work visa.  I’d called BUNAC on April 5, 2010 while sitting in my apartment in Shanghai (another long story) and said, “I turn 35 in ten days.  What can you do for me?”  They responded that it was all good as long as I turned 36 in New Zealand.  So I began the process of following a spirit call that had started a long time before that initiating conversation.

When I arrived in Auckland on 24 August 2010, I literally had in my mind, Okay, Universe.  I’m here. Now tell me why.  It would be one more year before I found out the answer standing in that professor’s office the first week of August, 2011.