Monday and another new week already. It was well below freezing this morning as all the little puddles of water were frozen along our jogging route. We enjoy going to the Hafer Road office on Mondays as we get to visit with the other Senior Missionaries and the young missionaries who come in on their p-day to use the center's computers to email home. We got an email today from a fellow who took our career workshop back in September. He starts his new job next week. He thanks us for our help, that really made our day!Tuesday we got an email from another fellow who took the same career workshop as the fellow who emailed on Monday. Anyway he also has found work (a job lead we sent him) and he starts next week. He was so grateful. It was really a neat thing that two candidates who "graduated" from the career workshop on the same day found work just one day apart. What a great feeling to think we might have been of help to someone. The Lord has blessed us so much. We found out that Aramco (oil company in Arabia that I use to work for) will be in town interviewing people for work in Saudi Arabia. We emailed our process engineer with the information and he sent back a note that he had already signed up, so I was glad he had heard about the opportunity. I had told him some months ago about our experience in Arabia and about Aramco. We found two more of our candidates who have full time work, hurrah! One of our west Africa candidates came in this evening. She needed help filling out applications on line. We also found a couple of jobs leads she was going to check out. Many of the on line job applications are a real pain to complete, so I see why so many candidates "give up".
Today, Wednesday, we went through all our candidates who registered on the new employment website and checked their profiles. So many have not completed or even started their profiles so it is impossible for potential employers to know or for us to know what type of employment they are looking for. We had a lady contact us who was trying to post a job on the website. That was interesting to go through that process with her. We also had a couple from west Africa come into the center. She needed a bit of help on her resume. After we worked on the resume we went on line to help them see how to find jobs on various websites. They have apparently been in the system for many years, so we hope they find work that is more permanent. It was warm - very nice and sunny today.
They have called a new church service missionary to help us in the Broadway building. She speaks Spanish and has her own tax service business (Sister Rios). Alex and Steve came to the Broadway building today to train her. She will be a wonderful help to those Spanish speaking job seekers. In fact while they were doing their training a member came in who spoke very little English and could not read or write Spanish very well. It was great to have Alex and Sister Rios there to help. We had stake and ward employment specialist training this evening up at the Hafer Road office. I do the new employment specialist training and Alex does the training for those who have been through the initial training. It makes for a very long day but the folks who attend seem to appreciate and get a lot out of the training so it makes it all worth it.
Friday it rained most of the day as it did yesterday. No one came into the Bering building today so we spent the day phoning and emailing our candidates who need to complete their online profiles. Before the new online registration process started, we would be able to meet the folks when they came in and could determine their employment needs at that time. However, with this new system we do not typically meet them and unless they call us back or email us we have no face to face time with them (which makes helping them a bit tough). We tried to send a job lead that we found to the couple that came to the Bering Building on Wednesday only to find that their phone (number they left with us) has been disconnected! Sometime we get a little frustrated with our candidates but we love them and want to help so we send emails (when they have a computer) and hopefully we will hear back from them.
We cleaned and did the laundry today (Saturday). Leona washed a couple rugs and used a different dryer than she had used earlier in the afternoon. When she removed them from the dryer she discovered someone's pen and the rugs were covered with ink. Thank goodness it wasn't our clothes! Our outing for P-day was to Costco to look at stuff and taste their samples! We only needed to buy a few things.
We attended the Baytown 1st ward, which was our third time for attending that ward. Steve Stotts, our employment manager, serves on the high council in his stake and he invited Leona and I to speak in sacrament meeting. We were thankful twice for that assignment, thankful to be asked and thankful it is over. We enjoyed the rest of the Sunday meetings - the lessons were good. We talked to two of our candidates that live in Baytown. They are both still looking for work. We were again able to shake hands with Elder Braithwaite. We met him the last time we were there, his mother and sister live in our ward in Newark. It is a beautiful sunny day , but still cool.
We have had another wonderful week and are so thankful that we can serve as missionaries at this time. Thanks to all of you for your love and support.
Love, Dad & Mom
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