God is in the details

I have been sitting at the computer reading all the family blogs, and enjoying the updates on everyone who has posted recently, and wishing some of the others would post so I could read up on them too. Then I realized that someone may very well be saying the same of me. So I decided to just do a quick update.

About two weeks ago, an RV dealer came into our office to register some snowmobiles they had just sold. As I was reviewing the information on the paper work to verify I had everything I needed before entering it all into the computer, I recognized the name of the new owner of a brand new snowmobile. It was my own little brother, Bill! I called his cell phone and asked him how he was doing? He said, "Fine, how are you?" I answered, "Well, I don't think I'm doing as well as you are. I didn't just buy a brand new snowmobile!" He asked, "How did you know about that?"

"I’m registering it as we speak!"

"Well, while you're at it, would you add Carol's name. I didn't do that and she wasn't really happy when she found out." So I did it.

Mindy got the results back on her ultrasound, and we are thrilled that she is going to have a baby girl this time. They have decided to name her Tilly JaNel. I was thinking through the past six years, and we have had 7 grandchildren. Six of them were boys. The only girl we have had is Lillian. It's about time we got another girl.

Dave has been doing well in his MBA class. The money he had planned to use for the second half of this semester had to be spent to save the life of our Buick, so he decided to wait until next semester to go back. (We have made a commitment to each other that we will not debt.) In the meantime, TCR Composites (the company he works for) sent him to a week-long training on quality auditing. He has learned a great deal, and in the process, has learned how to help other companies get set up for quality auditing as well as doing it with his own employer. He visited one of his previous co-workers who is now working for another company, and found they needed someone with this expertise to help get them set up for quality control. If their company can pass the quality control audits, they will be able to get contracts with oil companies worth millions of dollars. Dave told them he'd write up a contract and see if he could help them get the accreditation they need. Now we're thinking it might be a good thing he isn't attending school, or he wouldn't have had the time to get their systems set up for the quality control audits. He is always busy doing something. (I was actually looking forward to having a break from school and seeing him a couple of nights a week for the next three months. Sighhh.) Oh well, what can I say? He's a good man who spends a lot of time serving others and I love him for that.

Joe is sitting on pins a needles waiting to hear from a company in Logan called Ponderosa Engineering about a possible job. It has been a very strange sequence of events leading up to this, but as I explained to Joe yesterday, "Coincidence" is just the Lord's way of doing things anonymously. Dave’s brother, Jim just happened to be getting a haircut (which I think he does maybe four times a year) and his hairdresser’s husband works for this Ponderosa Engineering Company. Her husband, Sterling, mentioned that his company was overloaded with work and they were going to hire two new engineers. That night, Jim called Joe and tipped him off. Joe called Sterling the following morning, found the information to be true, and emailed a resume right off.

By mid-week a week ago, Dave had this strong impression that Joe needed to come to Utah and just walk in and introduce himself to the management of the company. You know—put a face to the name on the resume.

When Joe talked to Janette about it, it didn’t seem possible since she had agreed to substitute-teach school on Monday and Tuesday and Ethan and Sarah were having their ESOP testing. Janette needed someone to watch Lillian and Kate while she taught school, and to make matters worse, if Joe was coming, she wanted to come too. When she talked to the school secretary the following day, the secretary told her that there had been times when she had hired strictly off of resumes, but that occasionally, someone had walked in cold from the street and after meeting them, she had added them to the short list. That convinced Janette that he needed to come.

Joe called us Saturday evening and said he would be driving up with the three youngest children the next day. We made arrangements for Mindy to watch the three girls in Logan while he visited Ponderosa Engineering—if he could make arrangements to get in to meet them. Mind you, he still did not have any prior appointment or invitation from them.

After only five hours of sleep, he called Ponderosa Engineering at 8:15 am Monday morning. He talked to Sterling, and Sterling explained that they had not hired anyone yet. He was on his way into a meeting with the management team that would be doing the hiring. He said he would mention it to Phil and then get back with Joe after the meeting in about an hour.

Phil called back about 9:30 am and told Joe he was very interested in interviewing him. “How soon can you be here?” Joe told him he’d be there in one hour.

The interview went very well, and he met both managers who will be involved in the hiring. They promised Joe they would be getting in touch with him by the end of the week or the first of this next week. Interestingly enough, when Joe met Sterling, he recognized him. He had gone to Utah State with Joe and had worked on a project with him during their sophomore year.

You can call the whole thing coincidence if you want to, but I think the Lord is sending blessings to a well-deserving family.

Last Monday evening before Joe left to go back to Nevada, we had all the local children and grand-children for dinner and a fun visit. We missed Adam and Alicia—apparently Alicia forgot and left Adam without a car. The rest of us had a wonderful time catching up on each other’s lives.

I owe Susan. She helped clean up the kitchen with no water pressure in the sink. We have been having problems with our water pressure for months. That night it got so bad there was only a trickle coming out of the kitchen faucet. She fought it until there was nothing left. Mikey suggested that maybe we needed to bang on our pressure regulator. Dave has tried to adjust the pressure regulator before with no luck, but out of desperation, he attempted to adjust it again. This time he had success! We have more water pressure now than we have had for years!

Michael ran for Student Body President at BYU Hawaii, but lost in the first round on Friday. Leo was running as VP for his Student Body Presidency and they won--he confessed that they ran unopposed. Michael, on the other hand, had five other teams contesting in his race. We have also heard that Leo has received notice that he's on the list of accepted students at a medical school in Arizona. We haven't heard from Leo to confirm the details, but we're anxiously waiting to hear back from him. (Mindy was our source on this information and she wasn't really clear on the details.)

Saturday our Stake hosted a Relief Society Birthday celebration/Women’s Conference “The Power of Service.”

Valene, Second Counselor in our Presidency, had her husband in surgery on Thursday.

I had purchased the chicken on sale a week early while Lesa, our Stake R.S. President, was away on a cruise. The plan was that she would pick it up from me on Thursday evening about 6:00 pm on her way home from work and she was going to cook it while I was at another meeting Thursday evening. My meeting started at 7:00 pm. By 6:45, she still hadn’t arrived to pick up the chicken. When I got home at 9:00 that evening, I started cooking the chicken myself. Lesa’s one-year-old granddaughter (a twin) got RSV that evening and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and a double ear infection on top of the RSV.

After Lesa and I got back from purchasing the food Friday shortly after noon, she got a call about her aged aunt who has no other family than Lesa. She had to run her to the emergency room. She couldn’t even stay to take care of her—she just dropped her off and one of her daughters ended up coming to take care of the aunt.

Our committee met together at 3:00 pm Friday afternoon to make the chicken salad for the croissant sandwiches. That evening as we were setting up tables, preparing food, and setting up quilts to be tied the following morning, Sister Merrill (head of the quilting committee) collapsed while bringing the quilting supplies into the church. Tawna, our first counselor and a P.A., ran her to the emergency room fearing she was having a heart attack.

Saturday morning, I woke up with a raw throat and a splitting headache.

The day actually turned out quite well, in spite of the fact that I had to call Dave to come and rescue us on a power point presentation that wasn’t working and one of the speakers got the flu and had to leave in the middle of her presentation to throw up. Her husband seemed to fill in for her and everything ended up okay for us, but I’m not sure how Sister Simpson is doing since she left without any further comment.

This is one of those times when we become aware that after all we can do, the Lord picks up the pieces and reaches the finish line for us.