On Mon, Jun 03, 2019 at 11:10:36 -0700,
  Jack Craig <jack.craig.aptos@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>given the problems i surmounted getting this far makes me wonder it openvpn
>is really up to the task.

Have you looked at wireguard? It's not upstream yet, but the primary author
updates it for development kernels, so it's usually working for rc1. The
kernel module builds very easily on Fedora.

The config is pretty simple. End points are mutually authenticated. One
end can be roaming or behind nat and things will just work. It creates a
normal network device the you can use ip to manipulate.

I use it to give my laptops fixed ip addresses by routing through my home
network, no matter where they are connected.