A Cello Praise!

It's been over a week, and I can't believe I didn't write about this already! God is so good!

A few weeks ago, right after Christmas, Charis got to go spend a week with her cousin Hannah Gross in Pella, IA. She had so much fun! She got to go sledding, pond ice skating, and just in general had a wonderful time.

She also brought her cello with her. She practiced "a couple of times," so I'm not sure it was worth the trip for the cello, but it was a good idea in theory...

Anyway, on the way home, we went to St. Louis to see Sarah Greenwood's wedding. That was a wonderful and beautiful wedding, and we got to see some wonderful friends from our St. Louis days.

We had the cello with us in the car, and, unfortunately, we forgot that it was in the car. When we checked into our hotel, we just left the cello in the car. It stayed in the car all night long - and it was a below-freezing night that weekend - probably in the teens or less.

When we got home, Charis noticed her cello had this funny sound to it, and the strings were too close to the fingerboard. We took it to the guy we purchased it from in Tulsa, and he looked at it and we talked about what happens when you leave a wood instrument in severe temperatures. When he turned the cello over, there was a crack going down the the back of the cello. He saw that and told us that the cello was pretty much "ruined" in its value. He could fix the crack for about $100 - but he would never buy it back from us and it had lost any resale value. We just purchased this full-size cello for Charis in August!

You can imagine our despair as we left his shop - leaving this expensive instrument to be repaired for $100 that seemed to be "totaled' in his words...

Charis just broke down in tears after that, and there was not much to say or do. We had all kind of failed to remember to take the cello out of the car.

About three hours later, I got a call from the guy at the shop saying that he had called the company that made the cello, and they were going to stand behind their instrument and replace the cello! The guy had another one just like it in his shop, and so we returned later that afternoon with a brand new cello for $100 for the set-up!! We were just so amazed and so thankful!

God had just shown us that He is with us all the time, and can step in and fix problems for us, even when we were ready to face the loss!

I think both Charis and I could not stop smiling all night after that!

So - just thought I needed to put this down in writing! Thank you, God!!!

Thank you, Lord!

Our lives are going to be changing again! And all I can say right now is Thank You God for taking care of us and showing us Your power in our lives again!

It was October 15, and I was downstairs reading aloud to Charis & Daniel - we were all snuggled up together on our green little couch. It was so strange when David opened up the door and came in to this room - at about 11:30 a.m.! He works about an hour away - so when he walked in the door, I could just sense this little bit of doom coming when he asked to talk to me up in my room!

I won't go into the details about his job - but it turns out he was ultimately let go from his job at Tyson.

Years ago - about 16 years ago - we found ourselves in a situation that seemed a little similar but different in many ways. That particular situation affected me much more than this job because it was like leaving a wonderful family we had grown to love so much! We had no idea what God was going to do in us and for us, but we just trusted Him and sought His will for our lives. And it was after that when we moved to Pennsylvania and Davisville Church - and met amazing and wonderful people there who really helped us raise our young family then. It was a place we all loved and grew and saw God work in and through us!

So here we were, only this time without a real severance package and wondering what we were going to do? In this economy and with David having a change of career in his 40's and with only three years of experience?

Well, on that same day, David hit the internet and began his new full-time job - looking for a job! I have to say that he wins the award of being the most diligent job seeker I know! He really did work full time on this. And we learned a lot of things about his line of field.

The first thing we learned was that there seemed to be a real market for his field - data management/architecture. Companies now are having to store and manage all kinds of data and doing it right is of big importance to them.

We also learned that this field is also managed largely through contracting companies. After about 2 weeks of having his resume out there, we started getting calls daily from recruiters about his availability.

We also learned that getting a job like this doesn't happen in one week, or two, or three! It was going to take awhile.

After the first few days of job searching, David sent his resume to my brother to have him look it over. My brother has been in business management and we thought it would be good to have his opinion. One of his bit of advice for us was that he should include his church work on his resume. He hadn't included it because it wasn't really relevant to this field, and he also didn't want to distract from his field of expertise.

So - he changed his resume, and then must have applied for the job at HP after that. We can't even remember applying for the job at HP because there were so many jobs he applied for!

About two weeks later, he got an e-mail from the data manager at HP saying that after looking at hundreds of resumes, his rose to the top and was he still pursuing a job with them. We were just kind of amazed and so responded that yes - he was still looking!

So, he was scheduled for an interview over the phone with this guy later in the week. After that interview, which went very well, he was then scheduled for two tech interviews later the next week. In the meantime, David is getting calls and interviews with different contracting companies. One of these companies was one that was hiring for a position at Wal-Mart - which meant we wouldn't have to move! We were also hearing from INGDirect in Maryland and University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania!

David just kept pursuing everything and taking all interviews. It was like we were on a rollercoaster - going from this place to that place and then trying to "stay home" as well! It was so crazy. I think the week of Thanksgiving he had 5 interviews - all interviews that were past the first interview. We really had no idea what God was doing or where we were going to go.

After Thanksgiving, we found out that he did, indeed, do very well with the Wal-Mart contracting company and they were going to be offering a job and also that he had an interview for the last level at HP! It looked like two jobs were going to come through!

Then, to top everything off - he was told by the Wal-Mart contracting company that Wal-Mart wanted to pursue David directly, so that was off. Then he had to go into Wal-Mart for a face-to-face interview, and that went very well, and he was hinted to that an offer from them was forthcoming...

Then, on Monday, December 6th, we had our first offer from Capitol One in Richmond, VA! We weren't even really thinking about this job and it was the first one that came in. Since we knew there were others that were coming in, David was able to turn that one down - but not until we had a firm offer from HP!

The amazing thing about all of this is we just kept asking God what did He want for us, and where could we see his hand in all of this – which job would be the one He would want.

As we continually prayed about it, we realized that there was something about the HP job that just seemed supernatural – that there was something in it that seemed to be from the Lord. But – it also seemed that the Wal-Mart job had the same kind of thing...

But as we continued to pray, we had a growing sense that the boss from HP was a Christian. We couldn’t really put our fingers on it, but it just seemed that there was something special about his interaction with David and his interest in David’s previous career. After all the interviews were done, and there was a confirmation that David would be hired – we did indeed find out that this man was a Christian – and it was part of David’s past experience that actually caught his eye when he began to look at the resumes! It’s just amazing – out of hundreds of resumes, he finds David’s – who had been in music ministry for 20 years – and that kind of sticks out to him as someone to pursue!

There is a little more to this story – we were offered the job from HP with the information that an offer from Wal-Mart was forthcoming. But we wouldn’t have that offer for another week, so we really couldn’t compare. But the real clincher in our minds that was more “practical” was that if David worked for Wal-Mart, it would be an even further commute and then he would have to work 9 hour days and could not work through lunch – so his work day would at least be 9.5 or 10 hours! That would mean he would be away from home for 12 hours every day. We just knew this wouldn’t work for our family right now – the kids need him so much now. It’s amazing how much involvement he has as the kids have grown up.

So, as you can see, it’s been an amazing ride. I’m finishing this up a couple of weeks after I started it, and we just continue to be amazed at God’s goodness to us. David even got to start at HP on December 20^th and we received our first paycheck two weeks later – and he “had” to take vacation from December 23 – January 3, so he only worked two days! I know – we won’t have much vacation left, but it was so nice to have him home for Christmas and New Year’s, and we’re ready to begin the next five months of a “new normal” for us.

There are so many other things that we have seen – even the choice of Austin as a place for us to go. It just seems that God has his hand on this in every way, and we are so thankful.