Monday, October 26, 2015

He Goes Before Me


I've been meaning to update the world on my new job... I've typed a few blogs, but it seems I'm just never home long enough to remember to crack open my computer and post them. 

We'll see if I can get today's out.

Work is great. I've graduated from the first part of my training and am pretty independent.
I'm trained to work a very specific case type from a specific company. If I never had to learn a new type of case, I'd be fine with that. But, that's me worrying over the complications of someone else's retirement funds and my chance at potentially ruining their lives.

But! No matter, I'm enjoying my time on eSPIAs while I have them. For the time being, I show up at my cubical and try to pull up cases as online and check the paper work. If the paper work is all there and in good order I'll send it to my supervisor to do a quality check, if I pass that and the funds are in our account, than I issue the contract.

That part makes me the most nervous.. I'm always afraid I'm going to mess something up. But, I'm getting more and more comfortable every day.
Our floor is divided into teams. I'm on the complex services team, which means I'll handle a mixture of what other teams on this floor. My team huddles every morning at 9:15 and we go over the complications of different insurance paperworks and companies, brokers that are giving us trouble and other things like that. Usually all of this goes over my head, but I stand there and look like I know what they're talking about.

They also make jokes where the punch lines don't make any sense to me. It'll be like, "Insurance blah blah blah paperwork blah blah blah...... California!" And they think it's funny.. and maybe someday I'll understand why insurance paperwork in California is funny.. but right now...I got nothing. But my team is great. I doubt there are any believers on my team.. but maybe I'll be surprised.

The most obvious God-thing about this job is where they placed me, cubicle wise.
There were two or three empty cubicles amongst my team's cluster. However, because they wanted me close to the people who work most often with the kind of contracts on which I'm trained, they put me in a cubicle that is part of a different team's cluster. I'm close to the people I need to be, but the super fun fact about that "coincidence" is that I share a cubicle wall with a lady who is a believer.

It was my third or fourth day here that I was sitting at my computer and over the cubicle wall I could here the lady next to me talking to the lady on the other side of our cubicle wall  and I heard her say "I met them at church." I immediately perked up.
It was another day, that I heard her say, "I'm making them for small group tonight." After that I kept waiting for the perfect opportunity to introduce myself... but since she wasn't on my team there wasn't much excuse to pop my head over to her cube.

On Monday last week, however, one of my teammates who is usually very chatty throughout the day was out of the office, and so she popped her head over to mine to comment on how quiet it was without him around. I agreed. She then said, "I usually just keep my ear buds in and listen to my music" which is when I asked her, "What kind of music is that" and she hesitated a little before she said, "Oh, I just listen to Christian music." and so I asked her where she went to church and stuff like that, and she told me all about how much she likes Michael W. Smith music (She's in her 50s I think). After  a little chat on different Christian music we like she said, "Well! Nice to meet you. I'm glad we have that in common." And ever since then she's popped her head over my wall to ask after my day or share with me something about a song she was listening too.

It's been rewarding too, because she has given me a Michael W. Smith's classical symphony CD and has, just today, promised me his latest Christmas Album. :D
MWS Christmas Albums have been the mark of my Christmas for years! So, I'm pretty stoked about that. Having a car with a working CD player and a lot of drives that are more than 2 hours long, CDs are the things that make my drives sweet.

Thinking about how he Lord sent his followers out in teams of two and when I first got here I wondered how on earth I was going to do this by myself, I cannot deny that the Lord went before me on this one. For now, it's just me and Kim talking over our cubicle walls about our church events or Bible study lessons, but seeing as how you can hear everyone's conversations over cubicle walls, I'm sure it's making people think somewhere. 
Another blessing about this job, is that since there's only so much I can do if there isn't any paperwork available for my cases, I've been able to utilize my down time to study for my GRE.
I discovered sometime last week that my GRE study site is not blocked by the company firewalls, so I've been able to put in a lot of study time. In fact, I learned 51 new vocabulary words last week.

In other news, I've been loving all the things I've been doing with my church. We're going through Exodus in a Set Free series and it's been really great. Our small group meets Monday nights and we've had really great discussion and the whole group dynamic is pretty stellar. 


On Tuesday nights I help with AWANA. I love this because AWANA brings me back to my childhood. I LOVED attending AWANA when I was a kid. Now I'm the female leader for the 3rd-6th grade. We only have about 12 kids, and a good deal of them a kinda naughty.. but I like them a lot. A couple of them like me a lot and sometimes I forget that I'm the adult in charge because we're having so much fun.

On Wednesday nights (sometimes) I have Dr. Who night with some of my friends from Bible study. We have people from study who come just for the social outing, but Dr. Who makes no sense to them and they usually look a little shell shocked after one episode.

Friday and Saturday night are both church nights for me... usually there's a hangout for our Bible study on Fridays and then after church Saturday night.

I've also been volunteering in the nursery Sunday mornings. I like this a lot too, because I've missed being around very small children and I like to be in the heart of where needs are the greatest. And let me tell you, at my young church, there are TONS of babies and tons of need for nursery help. Good gracious. It usually looks something like world war III in our nursery room. That's mostly because I build giant lego towers and Neil and Xander fly their trucks into them and send the giant legos flying across the room. Only one kid's face has been hit by the flying legos so far, so it seems to be on OK distraction.

Those are the main things going on in my life at the moment. Besides all that I have a few painting projects to finish. One of which is a milk can that is *ALMOST* done. I hope to have it returned to the comissioner before the end of the month.. or by Thanksgiving, which ever one brings me back to Northwest Iowa first. 

Thanks for all the prayers, friends! God is hearing you and I am blessed. 

Saturday, October 3, 2015

knowing a little unknown... AKA I GOT A JOB

Happy October, friends! I had all but given up on ever getting to tell you my job situaion had changed, but, it's a new month, it's a new chapter. I am beyond EXCITED to announce that I have accepted a position with a company where I get to sit in a cubical and inspect paperwork and make sure it looks good and if it doesn't..I get to call them and tell them as much.

Bad guy, business. I havent started yet, and nothing about it seems to make feel especially comfortable, but it's a job and I am very thankful.

Actually, after days turned into weeks which turned into months of nothing... it came down to two jobs. I interviewed for two different jobs in different situations. One for a church office assistant and one for a cubical same-old-same-old job. I thought about the church job.. i thought, "this is it! Church environment, believing co-workers, technically doing ministry because its the behind-the-scenes stuff that all churches need." Then I interviewed for the coorporate job and it was same hours, same pay... but I felt like I blew the interview as I talked about how much I love helping people and they then explained I'd be ruining people's days.

I felt like "well, if I blew that interview, oh well.. Id rather work in a church, serving the Lord, it seems more right." But I was actually really upset at the thought of not getting the cubical job. For some inexplainable reason.. I mean.. Im not a cubical person. Im a front-desk-front-office-load-me-ith-work kinda girl. But, I just felt like, maybe the Lord doesnt intend for me to take the easy road when He puts easy things in front of me. Plus, I wasnt sure I was fully sensing the Holy Spirit during the church interview, and I think it would be very discouraging to me if I worked in a church where peeople are supposed to love Jesus but don't.. rather than a boring ol' office job where people just might not even know Jesus exists.

But, Wednesday afternoon I got a call and was asked, "if you were offered this job, what would make you hesitate" and so I said, " I interviewed for a job at a church and I thought i would prefer that one, but at this point, its who ever gets to me first and I havent heard from them" and so the lady on the other end of the phone said, "Well, they are offering you the position."

I took the night to sleep on it, and by 8am the next morning I knew I wanted to take the cubical job.
I called the other job to let them know I was accepting a position elsewhere and so they could move forward without me, and was told the lady who had interviewed me had been sick but intended to schedule me for a second interview. Even after I had officially accepted the cubical job, the church job called and said theyd like to still give me the option of joining them and backing out of the other job.

After nothing for FOREVER, I had too much. Tempting as it was.. I wanted to be a girl of my word, accepting the first one I committed to. PLUS! On top of all that, I kept thinking about a conversation I had with the guy who owns a company called Seafoam. His company had given me scholarships all throughout college that helped immensly with college bills and I had asked why they felt the need to be so generous. He said it was his goal to get believers into the working world. By finding college kids who truly loved the Lord and then investing in their college education, he intended to get more believers onto the corporate mission field. And, as I thought of that conversation, I thought, he invested in me, hoping Id be reaching the non-believers in the cubical life. And so! That was another motivation for this job.

I start on a Monday, Oct. 12th. Im trying not to freakout about all the unknowns and such. Trying to take the last week of freedom and rest in God's goodness.

So, all of you sweet praying friends, thank you. My unknown future is vaguely less unknown.