Not what we had planned, but better

The past 6 months have gone by really fast and I wanted to take a minute and write down an overview of what happened. At first I thought I'd wait to recap all this when everything had a happy ending. But this is life and how many times can you really say, "And they all lived happily ever after." So instead you get this version.

Back in March Brandon and I were facing a dilemma. He only had three more classes to take, but hours more of flying left to complete. The way the USU flight program was set up he had to complete the flying to be eligible to graduate with his degree in Aviation- Professional Pilot. We'd been trying to complete the flying, but we were running into problems with the organisation (or lack there of) within the flight department. It looked like it would take another year at the least to complete the flying.

We fasted for guidance of what to do next. That fast Sunday a friend of ours got up and bore his testimony. He talked about when Nephi was tied up by his brothers. Nephi prayed that he would have the power to break his bands. The Lord answered his prayer by loosening the bands enough for Nephi to get out of them. Our friend said that sometimes that is how our prayers are answered. We want to do something cool like burst our bands, but usually they are just loosened. Little did Brandon and I know how much our bands would be loosened.

The week after we fasted Brandon met with his academic advisor to discuss his options within the program. He wanted to know if it would be possible to transfer to another school or something like that. She suggested he meet with the advisor over interdisciplinary degrees. That advisor looked at Brandon's transcript and told him that all he needed to do to graduate was write a paper.

So suddenly we realised he could graduate. It wasn't going to be the "cool" way of suddenly winning over the flight department and racing through all the flight requirements in a few months. Instead it was the humble way of receiving a "made up degree." It only took us a few days to officially change his major to an Interdisciplinary degree in Aviation and Management. Then we had to decide what to do next.

We quickly decided that we wanted to get out of Logan. Neither of us had ever really loved the city, and we had been wanting out for years. Plus we needed to go somewhere where Brandon could fly. That somewhere turned out to be the Bountiful Sky Park in Woods Cross. There were only two things that would be hard to leave, our apartment and my job - and neither one of those were good enough to keep us in Logan long term.

At first we thought that I would be able to work from home for the company that I'd been with for 2 1/2 years. However, the at home team was being discontinued. (Ironically one of the major reasons for ending the home team was because of errors I found while auditing their work. So in some sense I put myself out of a job.) I figured I could get a better paying job in the Salt Lake area so this wasn't a huge blow.

In the middle of all these decisions we found out that I was pregnant. And then we found out I was pregnant with twins! This news sent all sorts of shock waves through our decision making process. The biggest question was should I stay at my job until the babies were born? We didn't have time to think about these questions for long because 6 days after we found out about the twins I went through what I thought was a miscarriage.

After the initial shock and grief wore off Brandon and I were sure of one thing. We wanted to get out of Logan and on with our lives as soon as possible. This resolve was further backed up when our landlord told us that he had found renters for our apartment and so we needed to be out by the end of June. So we found a new apartment in Bountiful, packed up our stuff, quit our jobs, and lept out into the world. We didn't have jobs yet but we were young, childless, and had a little over two months of savings in the bank. We would be okay.

We moved in and started looking for jobs. We also found out I was still pregnant. Sometimes I wonder if we would have had the courage to quit our jobs and move if we'd known the babies were okay. Or would we have clung to the security of insurance and income. I don't know what we would have done, but I'm glad things worked out the way they did.

Brandon was able to get a job as a ramp agent with Frontier Airlines within a month of our move. It started out as part time, but as of today he has worked up to full time. I applied a few places, but didn't get any job offers. We decided that it was best if I focused on taking things easy and keeping the babies healthy. So far this pregnancy has been very easy. I wonder if it would have been this easy if I was still working full time.

Brandon wrote his final paper over the summer and received an A. We are working on building up our savings again and then we will have him start flying. He met with the flight director for his new flight school and he was very impressed. They treated him like he mattered.

So here we are with deeper testimonies of savings, food storage, prayer, fasting, love, and the Lord's guidance. It's been an interesting 6 months. I never would have thought any of this was possible when we fasted back in March, but I'm so glad it happened. I am interested to see what happens in the next six months.