Dreamers, Achievers, Believers

It was quite a week last week. It started off on a more heavy note last Sunday, but as the week wore on, things became better and more clear. So let's do a little recap. This is going to be kind of long, so if you find this kind of stuff boring I've inserted pictures of funny cats for your entertainment. So...

1.5 Weeks Ago

About 1.5 weeks ago, my friend Jon from Living Room gave me the contact info for his uncle. His uncle is an engineer and apparently was looking for new grads and new hands to hire. That week, I gave him a few calls but he wasn't there when I called him and when he returned my calls, I wasn't here either. We were playing phone tag that week *insert schoolgirl giggle*.

Sunday Morning

So last Sunday morning, his uncle gave me a call at 9 am (The morning! My weakness! HISS!) and we talked about stuff. I was telling him a bit about school as well as elaborating my work/coop experience as he didn't have my resume yet. So he goes on to tell me about his friend's company who just spoke to him about hiring someone. He tells me about the company, what they do, their purpose and elaborates on the science behind the whole process. I should note that as he was explaining all this jargon, that it was going over my head; the company is more related to electrical engineering whereas I'm chemical. Anyhow, he tells me some terms and companies to look up and suggested tweaking my resume towards them. And I guess that's when things started to get heavy.

Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the job or company at all, but I guess it really put my job search and what I've been doing the past year into perspective. I was trying to weigh out two different things; on one hand I could settle for a job in a field that I'm not familiar with or on the other hand, keep searching and chase my dream. Even though I've been applying to all sorts of jobs, ideally, I would have liked to have been in either the clean air, clean water, energy, or environmental conservation/assesment field. That's the dream at least. At the moment it all felt so real.

So the whole day I was weighing all this out in my head. I guess my biggest fear is to trap myself in a field that I can't get out of. That afternoon one of my friend's had on his Facebook status this message: "2 questions! Do you have big dreams? Are you doing things to make it happen?". It felt so relevant at that moment. So the weight piled on. What am I doing about those dreams?

Chapter 3: Sunday Evening... church brings clarity

At church that evening, the pastoral intern Matt (ie. the nicest guy on the planet) gave an awesome message about Love (if you're interested, you can download it [here] or check out the website [here]). While not directly related to the battle waging on in my head that day, the message he spoke was with such reverence and grace that it helped clear my mind of the war inside. After service, I told one of my friend's the story of the battle and how it felt like there were two choices. I concluded that of course I would apply to this job, but to keep my eyes open still. I asked him to pray for me and that was that.

That night I skyped with my friend Ally from school and also elaborated on the whole situation. We went through our school transcript to see what courses and experiences I could tack on to my resume to appeal to the employer. It was too tough and too much of a stretch so I decided, I'm pretty much going to send the resume as is and we'll see what happens.

Act IV: The Morning Light

I woke up Monday morning feeling renewed. I don't know what it was, probably the prayer I received, but I felt less burdened than 8 hours prior. I just felt like it all made sense and I felt sort of dumb for even having battled myself with such a simple situation. For the past few weeks I've been asking people to pray for discernment and to help me listen to God. It felt like He was trying to tell me something that day, probably along the lines of, "hey, you've been praying for a job. I've been trying to throw you a bone here, wake up!". So wake up I did. I changed around a few of the words on the resume and fired it off to Jon's uncle. I felt better because I realized it wasn't the end of the line, it's just the beginning. There's so much to do and so much to look forward to. The days are still young.

On Tuesday morning, Jon's uncle gave me a call at 8 in the morning (8!) to ask me a few things. Here is an account of the conversation:

Jon's Uncle: Hi Jeff, I wanted to ask you about your salary expectations.
Me: uhhh... (it was 8 in the morning!)
Jon's Uncle: Did you have any thoughts or ideas on how much you're expecting?
Me: I was going to keep my options open to anything.
Jon's Uncle: Oh... well, don't settle for anything less than between $X or $Y (where X and Y are pretty big numbers).
Me: Oh okay. Goodbye. Zzzzz.

WHAT?! HOLY CRAP! That's way more money than I've ever seen! It was just funny because I already felt better about the opportunity anyways, but this made the pill easier to swallow. Money isn't my motivator, so I would have been happy either way.

Conclusion - Hope is where the heart is

So basically as it stands now, it's in the hands of the employer. Jon's uncle is vouching for me and sent the employer kind words about me so hopefully it'll pay off. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn't, well it doesn't. This isn't where my hopes lie. The story continues.

On Monday evening, I met with my friend Denise who was also from my program at school. She's a frequenter of this website, so she was up to date on some of my life things. She pointed out specifically my dream of working in the water industry to provide water to countries without good access to this resource (from this [entry] near the bottom). She pointed out that a friend of hers did exactly that with a Christian organization called Living Water Canada. She explained what she knew of their projects and my ears perked up. It was EXACTLY what I wanted to get into. That night, I checked out the website and found that they had changed their name to Water Ambassadors Canada (website [here]). I liked everything that I read and saw on the website. I sent them an email just to ask about the projects they have going on during the year and what the dates are. The next day, I received four emails from four different people, clearly they were enthusiastic about any interest in help. So right now, I'm conversing back and forth with them just trying to get more information. What they do is they'll send teams of a dozen people or so to countries like Guatemala or Nicaragua, and have the team drill wells, repair wells, or install water purifiers. What's great is that all this is done within 1 or 2 weeks.

This is what I want to do as my mission for God. It would only be 1 or 2 weeks of a year, which would be totally manageable. I could take on any job here, and yet still take time to go away and do this for a week. It seems like such a good and worthwhile cause. So right now my goal is after finding a job, hopefully within 1 year to go out and do this.

I've been praying for clarity, wisdom and vision, so I guess this is it. It's all pretty much still out of my hands, but if anything, I feel even more hopeful and more focused.

The other night I was flipping through my sermon notebook and came across a line that sank with me:

"The worries aren't worthy of someone who's trying to seek God."
-Pastor Cyril Guerette/iLL seeR

Amen.