March 2009...So we're excited about moving back to Mobile and pursing the path God has laid out for us, but we still need to eat. Since we had sunk most of our savings into keeping the flip house above water over the last two and a half years, we had virtually no savings to our name. Therefore, a job is a must...a quick must. But where do we start?
Being an accountant, of course I ran the numbers and we would need exactly $30,000/yr to pay our bills...and that didn't factor in independent health insurance. Toby and I both have degrees and years of valuable experience...$30k shouldn't be too hard to round up, right? We were perfectly willing to earn the minimum and scrimp by if it meant me staying home with Haley. My time with her over the first 18 months had been such a joy and the thought of putting her in daycare now was heartbreaking. All of that said, we were willing to do whatever it took to fulfill this calling. Even if it meant waiting tables late at night or putting Haley in daycare. We knew that God would provide what we needed. He wouldn't call us to something and then leave us hanging...that's simply not how He works!
On February 5, we'll call that "The Detour", God told Toby to work in a church. Ok, that's a good start. Our first inclination was to inquire about opportunities at the church we served when we lived in Mobile before. Even though there was a vacancy in the youth pastor position, it soon became clear that's not where Toby was going to work. Next we started searching the Internet and calling churches at the Spirit's prompting. Toby made a lot of phone calls and explained our situation to anyone who would listen...usually the volunteer who answered the phones. Several calls led to a discussion with a pastor whose interest had been sparked, but rarely did anything come from these phone calls. But all it takes is one...
After avoiding the prompting for weeks, Toby broke down and called a big church right down from the flip house. They had constantly been on our hearts, but for some reason we hadn't made contact with them. Toby gave his spill to the phone answering volunteer and must have mentioned our work with youth because she mentioned that the youth pastor was available and asked if Toby wanted to speak with him. Obviously, he jumped on the chance and had a great conversation with a young man. The youth pastor mentioned that the executive pastor was looking for an intern and recommended him sending in his resume. When Toby mentioned that all of his experience is in engineering and that he had no idea where to start in writing a resume for the ministry, the youth pastor offered to share his personal resume as a reference. WHAT?!? Who does that? ...Unless they feel like there's something to this joe-blow. So we got the resume, fixed up Toby's and then mentioned to some pastors at our local church in Tennessee about this possible opportunity. One of the pastors mentioned that he used to basically write resumes for a living back in the day before going into the ministry and asked if he could read over it before Toby sent it out. We jumped on the chance and received an incredible resume back. He didn't change the content, but altered the phrasing to more clearly describe our hearts. It was such a sweet gift from Jesus! So Toby sent off the resume to the executive pastor and waited...
Just before the detour, Toby had randomly been in touch with some engineering recruiters. They were not people we had pursued, they had made contact with Toby through a friend of a friend...that sort of thing. Up until the detour we hadn't given them much attention, but now that life was suddenly going in a different direction we decided to look a little more closely at what they had to offer. Discussions with the recruiter left Toby feeling encouraged about his engineering experience and marketability, so the recruiter went off to find him an engineering job in Mobile, and we waited...
All of this to say, we cast a wide net across Mobile. We touched base with old friends and asked them to keep an eye out for jobs. We had calls in to several churches in the area. We had a recruiter searching out the inside track. And there was always our table waiting experience from college to fall back on. Now it was time for Jesus to start closing doors and narrowing our options down to the path He had already laid. Always looming over these employment decisions was health insurance. Most part time jobs do not offer health insurance, or enough income to pay for independent coverage. It was a another mountain we had to lay at Jesus feet. So for now, we wait.....
can't wait to see what happens
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