mlbrowninwa

Do what you love. If teaching is it, then I would try to find a way to continue to do that. I was laid off from the automotive field over a year ago. Even though I found a job, I ended up having to leave that one to move to the east coast due to my wife landing a new job. She is the bread winner in our house. Even though I didn't mind automotive I had always wanted to try something different. Even though I was very good at it, I didn't find much satisfaction with the job. After being forced into unemployment again, I decided to go back to school and complete my degree. After lots of prayer I realized that the degree was the only thing holding me back and I now see that everything together, the layoff, moving, etc. gave me the ability to stay home and go back full time instead of part time. This will allow me to find what I love, finally. Pray about your situation and ask for guidance. Maybe everything is being set up for you to find the job of your dreams. Good luck to you.

I have been at this point myself a while back. However it is not a problem that cannot be worked out. When my wife and I were married she knew that I came from a very active Christian family, although not LDS. She also knew that I had stopped going to church soon after graduating high school and for the first few years of our marriage I never brought up going to church. However once I had children I felt the need to find a church to return to so my kids would have the same things that I remembered enjoying as a child. This led to coming and goings at many churches, all of which my wife did not want to be a part of. She joined in sometimes, but it really was "not her thing". She stopped joining in the minute I started to investigate the LDS church and refused to be a part of it. I felt that that was fine as I did not feel that she would ever seriously be involved in any church, so what would it matter. About two years ago I was baptized and became a member of the LDS church and it did change my life. My problem was I tried to push this on my family and it ended up causing problems. Eventually I backed off and became inactive. I have not been to church in several months and thanks to a recent move across the country, have just now over the last couple of days reached out to the bishop of my new ward. I am still unsure if I will start attending again. At this time, I get my weekly messages from BYU tv with the worship service show. My wife knows that I still have my testimony and am a believer in this church. I read my scriptures daily, pray daily, and live as I should. I like to think that I am partially active at this point and for right now it works. I have seen evidence over the last few months that things may soon work out where all of us will feel comfortable with me attending services again at my local ward. And I am happy to wait until I know everyone is alright with it to avoid causing my family any pain or hard feelings. I would advise to be open with your spouse about everything and listen to their concerns. Talking things out avoids a lot of problems later. And I might add that being open with people goes for your ward family as well. Communicate with your bishop and ward leaders as well. They will understand. With everyone on the same page, conflicts are avoided. I investigated the church for five years or so and like you say, it just falls into place for me. I wish you the best of luck in your continued journey.

Looks like Google is really leading the pack.

Iron Man 2. If you are into these action movies, this is a must see on the big screen!! Excellent movie!!

I have a bit of experience with this same situation. I have been a member of the LDS church almost a year now and recently ended a period of inactivity that lasted about five months while my wife and I worked through some issues. The issues where mainly focused around the church and I must say after taking a step back I can now see that I was at fault. When I decided to join the church, she did not stand in my way. The problems came when my son who is 15 decided to join as well. I did not push him to join in any way, but he was curious and decided to go with me. As I was excited to be part of the church and became more involved with home teaching and new member classes, things at home started to go down hill. Unconsciously, I was totally focusing on church and was pushing the church to my non-member family members all the time. Once I realized this, I contacted my Bishop and took a break for a bit. I continued to pray and read the scriptures, but stopped the pushing I was doing at home. My wife has her agency, as I have mine. The biggest thing I had to come to terms with was to respect that. I have now been going to church again for over a month, and things are working out much better. She still questions the church and that's ok. She knows that I am here to answer any questions she may have whenever she has them. I always put her and my family first and make sure that I don't get too involved with things that take time away from them. My fellow brothers and sisters have been very understanding about everything, which has only strengthened my testimony. My son has no longer been attending, but every couple weeks I invite him to join me, and nightly I pray that the following Sunday will be the day he does. I also pray that the Spirit will touch my wife and at some point she will want to join me and see first hand what gives me the joy I feel. Being a part member family is hard. Just keep the lines of communication open, and respect your partner's thoughts. Heavenly Father will do the rest.

Yes, it would appear that University of Phoenix is very expensive. I have taken some online classes before when I still lived in VA and they did seem harder than the ones I actually went to class for. Based on what I'm finding so far the best route may be to stick with community college for now and just jump schools again if I have to move.

I have been looking at them.

Hi all. Over the last few days I have been thinking about returning to school to complete my degree. I have been looking at a couple online programs due to my wife having the possibility of being transferred soon and the fact that I may have to move to find employment. Does anyone have any experience with an online degree program or any thoughts. BYU has a large amount of online classes that can transfer, but don't offer a complete online degree except for people that have attended one of their schools.

My wife has always watched the show, but I never had. Last night we were catching up on our recorded shows since Biggest Looser wasn't on and she watched three episodes of Big Love as I sat on the bed reading. It surely is not an accurate portrayal of the LDS church, but the do use the phrase Mormons quite a bit which really blurs the lines. After half watching three episodes, that was enough for me. I will not be watching more.

I believe that as well. There has been more than one of these "chance" type happenings over the past few months and each time it has been just the right up lift at just the right time.

Well it looks like the new format helped a bit. Got a call back from the shop that I sent info to this morning. He conducted a phone interview and said they would be calling people back for actual interviews later. At least that's a step further than I've been getting.

I've been doing it all along, just not to the extent of this last one. Hopefully the quality will stand out.

Wow, I have never heard of that, although it does not surprise me. My last three jobs were from postings on Craigslist. I guess I've just been lucky so far. There are a lot of ads on there that make you wonder though.

I sure wish I could do some research on companies. One thing that I have noticed is so many of them are posting blind box ads with only email address, especially those on Craigslist. I guess that helps with keeping the phone calls down from people calling and checking. This seems to be the rule with the automotive shops. I found a new ad this morning on Seattle's Craigslist in an area that I would really like to be in. Would be perfect for my son as the Bellevue, WA area is a big football school and one of the best high schools in the nation. I took my time and totally changed my cover letter and resume based on what the ad was asking for. We'll see if I fair any better.

As Pam knows, I'm a pretty big user of Facebook. This morning I logged in and was catching up on postings from east coast friends and still not really digging the new layout. I noticed on the top of my screen that I had quite a few notifications. I generally just click on it to clear them out, never really look at any of them. This morning though, one of them caught my eye. It was a notification from an app I signed up for several months back called "God wants you to know". i decided for the first time to check out what my message of the day said. Here's what it said: "On this day of your life, Mike, we believe God wants you to know ... that tonight you can turn your worries to God, and have a good night's sleep. Message from God You've been worrying too much about the future lately. So tonight, go ahead, put your faith in God, and just have a peaceful evening and a restful sleep. " Considering that I haven't slept much at all over the last couple nights, worrying about that very thing, I have taken that message to heart today. It actually brought tears to my eyes when I read that.