Missions and Miracles

I am not sure how nearly half a year has passed since I last blogged but somehow it has....I think it might have something to do with the fact that I my six kids keep distracting me (I just tried to watch this video from someone's blog and in the first minute and a half, I had to stop the video 5 times to deal with people!) ....but life has been good...a lot of really awesome things have happened. (Up to 7 interruptions now for this blog in case you were interested :-) )
So let's see, Junior managed to finally get hired as a lifeguard for the Y here, it took 3 months from the time he got his certification and we were starting to really worry about him saving anything for his mission but after a couple month there, he applied to the Space and Rocket Center to lifeguard there also so he now has two jobs and has been able to work 40+ hours a week recently. Yippee! We had a pretty special experience of having a lot of family here the day Junior recieved his mission call and I haven't even had time to watch the video of it until just now as I'm putting it on here! I can't even tell you how thankful I am that he got called to where he did--I know he might've liked to go somewhere a little more exotic but this old lady's heart probably couldn't have handled it. I have to work up to such things. I am really grateful that it's a Spanish-speaking mission because I think that will benefit him in life. (And just in case the video doesn't work, which it probably won't since it took two whole days just to upload it properly--I'll mention where he's going in my next post--ha, ha!) We knew a couple months before family came to visit for Nick's graduation and my niece Ida's baby blessing that there was a chance we'd get his mission call when everyone (not everyone, but close) was here, but then we discovered that the hospital here had lost his blood work so that all had to be redone, long story short--the delay made it so that Grandma and Grandpa Howe got to be here for their first grandchild's mission call--pretty cool if you ask me. I have been stressed this year about how we were going to possibly afford for him to even go but I keep going back to Nephi and how (to me) the very first thing we learn in the Book of Mormon is to never give up when God asks you to do something. He is not going to make it easy usually but He will make it happen. Money seems to forever be our struggle and I'm sure a million perfectly true judgments could be heaped on our heads (we have too many kids, we're too wasteful, failure to plan, etc.). I was explaining to one of the older kids that we just weren't making it financially month-to-month and then I started laughing and realized we have pretty much had that problem for nearly 20 years of marriage and here we still are--but no terribly hideous debt (at the moment, knock on wood)...a house to live in, clothes to wear, cars to drive--not too bad. But with us not making budget month after month after month this year and watching our savings hemorrhage constantly I was started to doubt a little that we were going to make it this year--especially knowing we'd need a lot for Junior's start-up costs and then more every month to fund his mission. Just cause it's fun to know--we had $600+ in fees for Nicholas's choir trips,etc., then needed a new dryer $500+, then I had 8 cavities! $300+, Hannah's braces $1000+, 3 separate car repairs $700+, termite inspection $200, new washer $300+, 3 sets of eye appts, contacts, glasses $600+, flood insurance $365, and so it goes. That's all I can remember right now but nothing really surprising when you have 6 kids, 4 cars and 1 house. Junior is supposed to go on his mission and I feel like we are doing the best we can in our sad little way. If I was going to be like Nephi, I would just have to press forward believing that help was coming, even if around every corner, something else stinky was waiting. And it's the waiting and the patience to do that that is so very, very, very, very hard. I'm sure everyone knows this but I am in the middle of learning it. I got so frustrated I felt like giving up (at multiple times) and then Jer had back surgery and a little while after that I had to take him to one of his appointments and he happened to have his Kindle on him. I was bored so I borrowed it and started reading Joseph Smith's Lectures on Faith. Jer's appointment was just long enough for me to read the whole thing. I think most of it is a little above my head but this one part stood out to me--"For doubt and faith do not exist in the same person at the same time; so that persons whose minds are under doubts and fears cannot have unshaken confidence; and where unshaken confidence is not there faith is weak; and where faith is weak their persons will not be able to contend against all the opposition, tribulations, and afflictions which they will have to encounter in order to be heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ Jesus, and they will grow weary in their minds, and the adversary will have power over them and destroy them." So my little excuse that I trust God but just worry anyway is a lie. I don't trust Him like Nephi did but I really, really, really, really want to. And so there began my trying to. And that really began with just a prayer of asking for help to do it. I am a distrustful, cynical person but I don't want to be. So I hit one of those days where I'd reached my limit and wanted to run away from home--I got as far as the car and realized I can't even run away one block because Jer just had surgery and he and my kids need me and I cannot be that selfish and then I felt very angry that everything just seemed to be falling apart financially despite how hard I was trying to "believe" it would be ok. As I got to the car I grumpily remembered we couldn't even find the community pool key that morning (and it would cost another $15 I didn't want to spend to replace it) and I had prayed that we'd find it. As I was standing next to the car realizing I wasn't going to be running away anytime soon, I had the impression to look in the Suburban for the key (although the kids assured me it had been thoroughly searched) and my hand went right under one of the seats and found it instantly. I didn't even search the car--I seriously reached in and found it in a second! And I realized that if Heavenly Father was going to help us find that little key, he was definitely going to help us send Junior on his mission. I just had to keep praying for the faith to believe it. And I feel a little more relaxed, even when things kept going wrong like another car repair and needing a new washer. At the same time all these things are going on, great things have happened that really are miracles in our lives. Nicholas has not been able to get started as a lifeguard at the Y yet despite them saying he passed everything, he filled out all the paperwork in May and they've said he's "hired". But I've noticed there have been several times we have needed him or someone else has and he's been available. He's also been racking up quite a debt to us since he hasn't been able to pay for his car/car insurance for several months. One miracle came when we suddenly realized if he could score higher on his ACT, his undergraduate schooling would be payed for at the University here. Since he was not working and had the time after school, we bought 2 ACT study books and gave him two weeks to prep to retake it trying to raise his score from a 29 to a 31. After a lot of prayer and fasting, he went in and took it and the day after Junior got his mission call, we found out Nick got a 33! That was a miracle. Not because he's not smart, but even just the timing of it all was a miracle. And I choose to believe that Nick not paying us back yet is a miracle too because it's forcing us to "save" that money. He will get enough to pay us back and much more this fall, right when Junior leaves on his mission. Junior getting that second job was a miracle too because he did not have the experience and wasn't the age they wanted either. In fact, I didn't think he should bother applying but he did and he's been getting most of his hours there where they pay him $10 an hour rather than the minimum wage at the Y. Plus he is interested in returning to work there in some other ways perhaps when he returns from his mission if he decides to go to school here. We had another car repair and then Jer's car started acting up again--the brake lights kept staying on. My brother-in-law Josh had just solved this problem while he was here and now it was happening again (from a completely different area this time though). Jer somehow managed to figure out that the pins had come off this little box under the steering column above the brakes. As I'm fussing at him for being contorted under the steering wheel a week after he's had back surgery, he reminds me we can't afford this problem. So he gets some zip ties for free from the auto repair guys and we go home to fix it. I told Jer not to get under the steering wheel again, I'd do it, so I'm down there and I can see what needs to happen but don't see how it's going to work with the zip ties and then Jer says he'll do it, I just need to get out of the way. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or scream. If I got out of the car, Jer was going to seriously hurt himself and if I stayed in the car-- well, at some point I was going to have to go to the bathroom. So I prayed to know what to do and I figured it out! I put the zip tie on at a diagonal that managed to work and somehow my hands got it tight enough despite the fact that I was so contorted I felt like a pretzel. This was a miracle to me. Jer also got a call from the community college here saying they need him to teach two classes this fall and it is nearly the amount per month we keep going over budget. And he also got a call to audition to be an assistant adjunct voice professor at the University here. We'll find out about that soon. And he picked up a vocal student for the next month and is looking to do more of that. It's not only a miracle that he is getting a chance to teach college but to do so before he retires next year so he can know for sure if that's really what he wants to do. And we've had family members being so generous with their offered monthly contributions to Junior's mission--which is so greatly appreciated. Even my visiting teacher came over with a generous check to help support Junior. And before I forget--another miracle that seemed like something going wrong at first. We realized earlier this year we could drop our home mortgage percentage by a point and so started the paperwork for that but it was taking Forever! We have no idea why it was taking so long but it was dragging on and on and on and then Jer started talking to some guy at work about it and this guy just refi'd for even lower, so we switched companies and the refi is nearly done for a percentage and a half lower which saves us $150 a month on top of being able to skip August's mortgage payment which is right when we will be in the thick of trying to get Junior fully ready. I've learned a lot of things lately and so a couple weeks ago when our washer started spurting water everywhere and had to be replaced and now our new dryer doesn't seem to be working right, I have been able to stay more calm and say, hey, we'll be ok. We may not make it to Disneyworld anytime in the near future but our son will go on his mission this year! Things can still go very wrong and everything will end up right. This blog is taking me forever to post so now I can say regarding our dryer, we were pretty sure it was the venting system in the house that was causing our clothes to have to be dried twice (and when you have 8 people making dirty laundry--that just gets completely out of hand!), and our house is past the year warranty and so we decided to try one of those vent cleaner kits rather than hiring someone to do it but we couldn't figure out why the brush thing wouldn't go straight through the vent. So Jer talked to his friend here that sells the houses in our neighborhood and he sent a guy over to check it out and sure enough they never took some kind of metal filter thingamajig off of it and it was completely blocking the vent but we don't have to pay anything! (except for the vent cleaner kit which will come in handy at some point again) I have a feeling our electric bill will go down once we aren't drying every load twice. So we are just bumbling along like usual but I feel really blessed. And I'm really hoping I don't need to relearn these things and it'll stick this time too. :-) And now that I'm on day two of trying to post this, I can say I got another opportunity to trust that things will be ok--our A/C froze over last night but thanks to this happening while my brother-in-laws were here in late May I knew what to do so we may have to get it looked at soon but I can manage it for now and we took our Suburban in because the front A/C hasn't been working and they said it would cost $800 to fix. But guess what? We aren't fixing it! Ha! We've got 3 other cars with A/C thank you very much and fall is just around the corner. :-) Life is good, seriously.