Work!

I(Darin) worked today for money for the first time in over 7 months.  When we left the US in June, I had no idea that it would be such a long vacation.  I’d say the first 2 months were kind of nice taking it easy, while our bank account still was looking somewhat healthy.  Once we got to month 5 and we were running out of money with nothing much developing yet with the gas station, I started to panic a little.  Because of my immigration status, I’m not allowed to work for anyone other than Sediba One Stop, the name of our station and the company that we are half owners of.  After talking with some people here, we realized that I could possibly find work as a “consultant”, with my employer paying me thru Sediba.  So I started to put the word out that I was looking for something part time.  After a month, I didn’t have any leads.  So I talked to someone at our church here about putting an announcement up on the bulletin board where others have advertised houses for rent or roommates needed.  The very first Sunday my notice was up, I got approached by a guy that I met briefly a couple months before. 
 

I have to tell you that I believe God was working some things out behind the scenes and we’ve only just seen some of His plan unfolding.  Long story short, another friend of ours had volunteered me to handle making popcorn and buying pop for 150+ people for a movie night at a church family camp back in September.  I reluctantly said yes, I thought it wouldn’t be too hard and would be a good way to meet some people and get involved at church.  Lloyd, the guy who was running the family camp, and for whom Jonna and I made popcorn for a couple hours that night, is the guy who approached me at church.  I truly believe that if Lloyd didn’t know me from that experience, he probably would have read my note on the board and not thought twice about it. 

Anyway, Lloyd is part of a group that owns and manages hundreds of apartment complexes in and around Pretoria.  They outsource all of the maintenance work to other people.  When he saw I had an engineering degree, he assumed I could handle some of the stuff.  He said I could start with some easy jobs and if it went well, I could possibly take on more work.  So today, I was responsible for going to an apartment building and changing all the light bulbs that were burnt out in the entry way and walkways.  I know, pretty simple stuff, but I’m at the point where I’ll do anything for a small paycheck.  Knowing that I couldn’t handle the job alone, I called up my trusty sidekick Tyson, to see if he would be onboard with helping.  He was SOOO excited and couldn’t stop talking about it before bed last night.  He found a pair of gloves that he could wear and he picked out a “work outfit” so it would be ready for this morning. 

I won’t go into all the details of the work, but we were gone for about 8 hours today.  Of that time, 1.5 hours was driving back and forth, 1.5 hours was initial reconnaissance work trying to figure out how to get into the building and where everything was, 2 hours was spent waiting for someone with a key to the electrical panel to come and unlock it so I could bypass a timer so the hall lights came on during the day instead of only at night, and that leaves about 3 hours of actually changing bulbs and running to the hardware store again cause we didn’t have enough new lights.  It was a good day, Tyson had a blast being my right hand man and met a couple kids living there, and I didn’t fall off the ladder. 

We’ve been home now for a couple hours, I am sore from going up and down the ladder about 100 times and I need a shower after having dead bugs rain on me multiple times from inside the light covers.  I still have to figure out all the payment details with our accountant, so we might not see this income for another few weeks, but I think I made enough to at least cover the gas to get back and forth, the McDonalds lunch with my buddy, and the Powerades we gulped down during one of our sweaty breaks.  Hopefully Lloyd will be happy with the work and I can make this a regular thing!