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.
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