What's the best job you've ever had?

 From my Storyworth collection

I have not had a lot of jobs in my life. I had one main job in high school (as I previously shared, I worked in the kitchen at Autumn Winds restaurant), I was a custodian in college and worked for the county painting (the underside of) bridges during the summer. I worked one summer in a boys’ home as a counselor after graduating from college. When I got married, I worked at Payless shoes for a year and then made it onto staff at Vine Fellowship (which was Trinity New Life Fellowship at the time). During my time at the church, I was youth pastor/secretary, then just youth pastor and lastly administrative pastor.

If I were to say which was the best job, I would probably have to say it was my years as youth pastor with Brooke by my side. We started with 3 students who were NOT interested in a relationship with the Lord. Over the 8 years we were the youth pastors, our group grew to 30 youth (on a good Wednesday night), we had six Wednesday night youth leaders and 4 married couples hosting Sunday night small groups for youth. We developed a program to encourage students to read through the Bible each year (FBI…Fellowship of Bible Investigators) and saw youth engage in ministry both inside and outside the church. It took a while to mature enough to understand getting and implementing a vision for the ministry, but once I did, I began discovering how God had created me and how He wanted to use me.

For the past 10 years or so I have also had a side job doing computer work…I call it More Tech Savvy. I never had any kind of computer or technology training; I just liked messing with computers and discovered other people do not…and these people could use my help. In early 2020, I made some connections and got hired for less than a year with a company called Cybermedix. The founder of Cybermedix is a Christian man with a desire to make the world a better place (literally), and he used his training and skills to do so. The part of the business I was involved with was a computer system for monitoring ventilators (that is a simple, superficial explanation). Cybermedix had computer systems that needed to be configured for installation and use, but the person who previously configured them for the company suddenly left the company and left them with nobody who knew how to configure their own systems. I was hired to figure out how to configure them. It took more than 40 hours just to learn what I did not know (you don’t know what you don’t know when you are thrown into something like this). Only then could I begin to figure out where to go for help. I learned how to configure the systems and learned how to work remotely to get people in another state to help me prep a facility for installation (computer networking, asking them to do something I needed for which I did not even have the vocabulary or training to communicate properly in the beginning). Once that was done, I worked with a tech in California to remotely configure the systems on site. Once the systems were installed, I became tech support. Trouble shooting then had to be done remotely and, if a system was down so I could not access it, I had to work with medical staff at each facility who had ZERO tech experience. I would explain over the phone what each piece of equipment looked like and then ask them to describe what they saw (was the power light on, was it connected to this other piece of equipment, etc.). Once I talked them through getting the system back on, I could log in and complete the repair. Every single step was discovering what I did not know and then figuring out how to get the resources (people, assistance and knowledge) I needed to get the job done. I was able to be an asset to Cybermedix, and I found that kind of work to be exhilarating.

So, I guess the two best jobs I had were being youth pastor and being a system configuration specialist.

Which sports teams were you a fan of as a child?

 From my Storyworth collection

This is kind of a funny question to answer. Both as a child as an adult, my “favorite” sports teams have pretty much been those of family. Ever since I can remember, my parents have been fans of the Dallas Cowboys, so much so that they call them by their first names when they yell at them on the TV! As a child, the Cowboys were my “favorite team”…I think I even had a pair of Dallas Cowboy pajamas at one point.

My family watched a lot of professional football, so growing up (in high school), I had a fairly decent a knowledge and players. Somewhere along the way, I chose the Washington Redskins as my favorite football team and actually had a Redskins sweatshirt. When I went to college outside of Chicago, I rooted for the Chicago Bears as well.

When I got to college, we did not have a TV in our room, and I was not a big fan of going down into the lounge to watch anything on the community TV. School and homework kept me busy, and I pretty much lost touch with who played for which team, etc. After that, I was never really a football fan again.

And then, in 1993 I met this crazy chick, fell in love and got married. This girl grew up playing softball and watched all kinds of sports (golf, baseball, college and pro football). Brooke is a HARD-CORE Alabama fan, so my college team of choice is, of course, Alabama. Besides wanting to support my wife, I have noticed that post game time around the house is MUCH happier when the Crimson Tide wins, so yet another reason to cheer for Alabama. The same goes for pro football. My wife was a 49ers fan when Joe Montana played there and then she converted to a Kansas City Chiefs fan (and has remained so to this day) when Montana moved there.

Brooke and I were grocery shopping today and this guy told me he liked my shirt. I bought myself this shirt I am not sure how many years ago, but it is still true today! I don’t care that much about sports, but I do LOVE my wife!

When did you get your first car?

 From my Storyworth collection

I got my first car as a graduation present…I think (1987). It was my dad’s “classic car” that he was so proud of. It was our old family car, a 1972 Chevy Impala convertible. One of the first places I remember driving it was to Steamboat Days (annual fair) on the river in Burlington, Iowa. The Beach Boys came to town, so I drove my friend Matt and myself to the concert. We put the top down and drove into town playing my Beach Boys cassette tape using an 8-track adapter in the car’s stereo!

This is not a picture of my actual car, but this is the 1972 Chevy Impala convertible, and it is the color of our car (although the paintjob on ours was more faded). The car was HUGE and huge gas guzzler.

I could not afford the gas and so my parents bought a 1980-something Ford Escort from a family at church in Burlington. I had a couple interesting stories with this car. This was my first stick shift, so I practiced driving it up and down our country roads until I was comfortable with the clutch. One of my first trips into town was to the library in downtown Burlington on a BIG hill. I pulled into a parking space going uphill so that when it was time to leave, I could push in the clutch and brake, put car in first gear, leave the clutch in and let off the brake so it would coast back out of my space. I could then brake and let the clutch out pulling forward and not have to focus on shifting the car into first gear since it was a BIG hill, and I was not really comfortable with a stick shift yet. My plan fell apart when somebody was standing next to the car to my right, waiting for me to back out so they could get in their car. I nervously put the car in reverse and back out, braked, quickly threw the car into gear and tried to pull off (going uphill). The car almost died, so I pushed in the clutch and hit the brake. I tried again and car bogged down, about ready to die. All this time, the person getting into their car was watching me and I was beginning to panic. Finally, I revved the car WAY up and was able to pull out going up the hill. The car still bogged down, but I made it. When I shifted into second gear, the car LEAPT to life! In my nervousness, I had thrown the car into third gear instead of first gear leaving my parking space. No wonder it kept trying to die and I had to rev the engine so much to make it!

Again, this is not an actual picture of my car, but mine was similar and it was tan. One day I noticed a couple rust spots on my hood, so I stopped by the auto supply store and bought some “tan” paint. I’m not sure what I was thinking, I guess “Tan car, buy ‘tan’ paint.” I had no clue about color matching, so I sanded the rust spots and applied several generous spots of primer paint. It looked pretty bad, but I wasn’t worried since I had purchased the tan paint. I covered the primer with the ‘tan’ spray paint I bought. When it dried, I had a concept of the importance of color matching! I ruined the paint job on my car. Fortunately, Dad was kind enough to do a business trade with a guy who ran an auto paint shop, so my car was soon repainted a very cool looking dark tan with gold flecks in it. It looked like a new car!

This is the car I drove to college in Kankakee, IL. My last memory with this car was when it had to go into the shop because it quit on my on the way to church one Wednesday night. I don’t remember all the details, but my church paid to have it towed to the shop of an auto repair place owned by a guy in the church. It appeared my newly discovered speed shifting skills were NOT good for my car. I am not sure what broke, but the church paid the guy at the shop what must have been a heavily discounted rate. He let me know it was a LOT of work to replace the broken part, it cost a LOT more than he charged and my speed shifting was NOT a good idea. I learned my lesson and took better care of my car after that.