Honestly... My internet connection was not happy that I wanted to write this this morning, and right now, about 5 minutes before I HAVE to leave for PT (Physical Training) I pop on.  haha  Anyways, many of you might have gotten an e-mail about Jordan and him being MY Hero, truly, but the boy has some integrity. And for him to show it at this age is incredible that that has been instilled(sp?) in him.  Oh yeah I was tearin up when I saw him get off his tractor at 4:30pm face the music and put his hand over his heart...  He has integrity that is above all... I mean he was playing for goodness sakes!  he got off his tractor for that! He wont get off the tractor for me!  

 

But anyways, Things are good here, one week left with the family before they end their Air Force Journey and go forward into our new life.  That is beginning to be really hard for me to take, but I know it will be for the better of us and our future if I can get all I can done before its time. 

70 days until I quit my job... 

Well, What can I say... Not much.  I am having a little issue with wanting to find out about Lockheed Martin.  I keep checking my application status for all seven apps.  I know I shouldn't.  Maybe that is something I should start fasting. 

I have been listening a lot lately to Joyce Meyer.  If you want to listen to something that will totally change your life you need to subscribe to her "Enjoying Everyday Life" podcast.  Or heck, I will make you a CD.   Some of the things she brings up and talks about it totally life changing like I have never heard it before.

I will get more into that later, but today is thursday and Thursdays are like my mondays when it comes to getting ready for work.  We have a briefing with everyone in the shop first thing in the morning and it seems that I never make it on time.  That is the one thing in my career I cannot make it on time.  It might be that Thursdays are trash day, so when I am on schedule and walk out of the garage, I realize and then have to go back and get all the trash and recycling out.  :D

71 Days until I quit my job...

Hello again, 

     It was brought to my attention that the comment I made about me being not much for nothing without Jayme and Joel Osteen was a little out of line.  Well here is my reply to that. 

I feel God has worked through them to make me better by telling me over and over, just in the right times when I feel like giving up on all of it, that I can do it. I know I can do all thing through Christ who strenthgens me, its just them doing his work! :) I can look back through my life and see those people all the way through my life. I would say the first I could remember would probably be my mom, then Helen Carter, Pastor Baker, Randall (Ryans dad), Greg Gilberto, then Ryan, Helen Hall, Tom and Pastor Nathan, Matt Shetler, Lori, Yvonne, Donnell, Lyndon, Jayme, My last Chief (Chief Weyrauch), and then Joel Osteen.

I am sure there are so many people that I missed but its early! but even if these people didn't know, they were all an example for me, that motivated me.

Everyone of those people at some time were there for me right at the time I needed them most. And I owe my life to them for doing God's work and caring for me at those times.

One more thing I have to write about is something I haven't wrote about yet.  Monday started our church's 21 day fast. I decided to fast Sugar, Soda, and Fast Food.  Well let me tell you, it has been anything but easy.  Every single time I go to grab a hershey kiss, or a soda for lunch, I realize I can't.  And right when I am about to throw it all our the window, I realize just how silly, and rediculous that is.  It is all just something you put in your body that, lets face it, isn't good no matter how you look at it.  But still, everytime I get that urge, it is almost like WW3 inside me "saying who cares just eat it" and the other side saying, "Are you seriously about to give up? Do you understand what Jesus went through?"  Ofcourse, I don't do it and then spend the next 10-20 minutes thinking how silly it was to even think otherwise.  This is different than a diet, Im not doing it for that, it is just something I knew I was attached to.  There was no way I could do a total fast and still function at PT and work, so I had to pick the next best thing, and you got it.  If you don't think its hard try it for 2 days, then you will realize how quickly you are dependant on it. 

72 days until I quit my job...

Honestly, Anybody who knows me, knows I couldn't pass up this chance to throw a little Longhorn love towards the Buckeye Nation.  Well here goes,

To the Ohio State Buckeye Nation, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO PLAY 60 MINUTES.  The game of NCAA Football does not have a 10 rule run.  This is not your backyard wiffle ball.  You need to play the rest of the game and hey, maybe, just maybe do some research on the team you had 8 weeks to prepare for.  Maybe realize that they are going to take your weak points that are on the game tapes from all season.  Maybe look at those weak points and switch some things around.  Wow, I would be embarrassed to show my face back on Campus after the second year in a row, you had your heineys handed to you. But hey, you scored 10 more points than the Florida game.  From the half buckeye in me, "There's always next year, to blow it in the big game".  But don't think you are going to get past USC that easy.

On to my 73 days left, I applied for a Lockheed Martin job yesterday after speaking with a Military relations recruiter.  The Lockheed Martin organization is exactly what I would be looking for to get involved with.  They are on the cutting edge of technology, they provide incredible benefits to include a "pension".  They are totally involved in providing the best of the best for their employees from life insurance, medical, matched 401K, and more.

I am excited about the opportunites ahead of us.  Again, my family has been so supportive about me getting school work done, and learning as much as I can. 

God speaks to me everyday showing me the way.  Here is just a quick example of what he showed me this morning. Just a Preface, I am not very optimistic, and if it wasn't for God, Jayme and Joel Osteen then I wouldn't be much for nothing!  :)  But here was my message first thing this morning:

This is taken from "Today's Word with Joel and Victoria Osteen" I get in my inbox every morning.

Expect Good Things

Today's Scripture

"Surely goodness and loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life…" (Psalm 23:6).

Today's Word from Joel and Victoria

What are you expecting today? Are you expecting to rise higher in life? Are you expecting good breaks? Are you expecting goodness to follow you everywhere you go? If you are expecting to get the short end of the stick, your own wrong thinking will keep you in mediocrity. Remember, God will meet you at the level of your expectations. Pay attention to what you are thinking about and make the choice to believe God for good things. Every day, imagine there are blessings, favor, increase, and promotion in your path. They already have your name on it! It's just a matter of time before you come across them. Start confessing everyday "Something good is going to happen to me today." Stand strong when trouble comes, knowing that your best days are ahead. Believe that God's blessings will overtake you! Expect goodness and mercy to chase you down. If you'll learn to raise your level of expectancy, God will pour out His blessings and favor on you. You'll rise to new levels and live the life of victory He has in store.

I couldn't say any better myself.  I get all kinds of signs like this, to include yesterday, When I spoke with the Military Relation Recruiter, and out of 4-5 recruiters, I just so happened to have the Retired Chief Master Sergeant from the Air Force.  He spent 8 years of his career in England, and has been to Cannon, and he has worked with the staffing department for the IT department. 

I dont think that is a coincedence.

Well, Basically, I am going to blog for the next 74 days a mental countdown of everything that goes on when you transition from the military and a perfectly good job to follow what We believe is God's plan for our lives.

Today and Yesterday, have particularly been one of the hardest days in the past few months.  Jayme and I have been looking for houses, and jobs and sometimes the hardest thing is to sit back and let God take care of it.  We want to solve everything in the human realm.  We as people think we have to have everything laid out to where nothing can go wrong...  But inevitably if God isn't in it, something will go wrong. 

So right now, I am focused on the job search.  Currently, I am looking for some sort of an IT job.  Computer Systems Administrator, Database Administrator, Web designer, Web Programmer, basically anything along those lines.  Lockheed Martin is getting my full attention right now, from what I know right now, They have everything I need and want in a career. 

I owe it to Jayme for keeping our finances on track for the past 6 years freeing us from tens of thousands of dollars in debt and putting enough of a cushion to where I can focus on getting "The Job" instead of having to go work for $12/hr and looking for a job part time.

My whole family has been very supportive, and they are actually getting ready to leave New Mexico early to head back to find a place to live, and allow me time to finish school.  Not to mention spend some much needed time with Jayme's sister and kiddies. 

I will ask you one thing, is just to think of us in prayer during this rough time!  Jayme and I have been through more than most people will ever go through in just the past 6 years, and this isnt going to be any different. 

74 days to go until I quit my job...

I have to start out by saying Merry Christmas.  It is the holiday season and as we are here in Clovis, NM we have seen such a different style of Feliz Navidad. 

Most of you who know me, knows that I am not one to preach or push Christ of religion on anyone, but I TRY to live the way the Christ would have it so others can see Him through me.  As always, I fall short of it.  But as we were watching the Christmas parade last night on Main St. in Clovis.  Things were very cold, sirens were going off everywhere, people were dancing to hispanic Christmas music, and for a little bit it seemed as if everything was in fast forward.  You couldn't here anybody really talking to each other, it was practically chaos. 

Just about the middle of the parade one particular float was passing and I could not read what they had spelled out in lights on the side of the float.  Just then it was like time stood still and it was just me and this other guy and his girlfriend on the street.  It was like he had a megaphone pointed right at my ear.  All I heard was... "That says happy birthday"  "Why in the world would they put that..." "How about Merry Christmas or something... but happy birthday" 

I was blown away.  He really didn't know whose birthday they were celebrating... I guess in my sheltered life, I thought everybody in America at least knew what Christmas was about at least behind the scenes.  Even though they might not celebrate Christmas for that reason, I thought everybody knew...

Please pray for those who still don't know who Jesus is, I am not saying pray for people who are not Christians, please pray for those who really have not have not heard the good news. 

What do you love to do? Chances are that love can be tapped into as service for the Lord. This kind of thinking may seem obvious, but it is radical at least to my Christian upbringing.

 

I grew up with a kind of warped Christianity that taught that if I was passionate about something, it was probably wrong. God was the great killjoy in the sky. Virtue was painful. The good usually felt bad. The bad (we were told) felt good. Denying yourself meant never doing anything you really wanted to do. Conversely, if you hated doing something, that was most likely what God was calling you to do. "God, please don't send me toAfrica" was a prayer you'd better not pray, because that was the first place he would probably send you if you prayed that prayer. As you might imagine, this kind of thinking turned out a generation of very dull, boring Christians who were always suspicious of having fun. Where do you think the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live came from, anyway?

Actually, God is one who delights in giving us our heart's desire. In fact, he's the one who gave us our desires in the first place, and he gave them to us not to frustrate us but to help us be useful and fulfilled in our service for him.

Think of what you know about King David in the Old Testament. Now here's a guy who obviously loved music, poetry, women, and war. So he became a warrior/king and all his passions, in their proper places and under the Spirit's control, drove him to be not only a great king, but a man after God's own heart. God didn't give him all these passions and then tell him to spend his life being a scribe in a cave somewhere. (He saved that for me!)

As a child, I had a passion for music. I would spend hours doodling on the piano, and when I got my first guitar, it became the goal of my life to make the same sounds I heard in my favorite songs. When, as a young adult, God put the idea in my head to use all these passions and skills to write and perform music about his Gospel and his truth, I thought I wasn't hearing correctly at first. That couldn't be serving God; that would be too much fun! It took an adjustment of my understanding of God and his ways to really believe God was in this. Now I know that this is the way he works. If he wants us to do something, he'll put a desire in our heart to do it.

God is not in the frustrating business; he is in the fulfilling, joy-filled business. So if you are desirous of serving God, think first about what you can do and what you love to do. Serving God will be along those lines.

Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional