In 2006 I decided to join the United States Air Force. When I was younger I knew I was going to do two things, serve a full-time mission and serve my country. When I came home from serving a mission in the Pennsylvania, Harrisburg Mission things really accelerated and between work, school and getting married I was pretty busy. Before I knew it years had passed and I still hadn’t made the jump into the military. However, that feeling of service to our nation never left me. So, at the age of 26 I joined. According to my test scores I was a natural mechanic. I fully expected to work on planes but the Air Force decided to make me a Meteorologist. The job would consist of making weather forecasts for our pilots anywhere in the world and required weather stations to be manned around the clock. The schooling was very long and would require me to be away from my wife and 2-year-old little girl. None of this sat well with me and I soon found myself complaining about it. After I graduated from weather school the Air Force assigned me to Hickam AFB, Hawaii. For the first 6 months we lived in paradise. Once the excitement of living in a new place, especially Hawaii, wore off all I could see were the negative things about it and the complaining continued. We had many good friends, but the people weren’t very friendly. We lived in one of the most beautiful places on earth, but it was too far away from home. We adopted our second child through LDS services while we lived in Hawaii. She filled a tremendous void in our family that was left by tragedy and continues to be a light and a joy in our lives, but we received a lot of racism as white parent adopting an Asian baby. If all we do is look for the negative, we’ll find it and there is always something to complain about.
My next duty station was Hurlburt Field, Florida. This was easily one of the most difficult assignments I ever had. Hurlburt Field is the Air Force’s special operations headquarters. Because my job required me to provide our elite fighting forces around the world with weather forecasts at any time our operations tempo was very high and it was very easy to get burned out. During this time, I was called to serve as a scout master and Priest Quorum advisor in our branch with no other help. In addition to everything else I got a distinct impression that I needed to go back to school. So I did, full time. Little did I know, at the time, this was a recipe for disaster. But our little family managed to get through it.
In late 2011 I left the active duty Air Force, we moved back to Arizona and I took what I learned to the Arizona Air National Guard. I worked for the Guard full time for a little while but my intention was to find civilian employment and only do the military thing part time. In 2014 I found a job doing environmental testing but the pay would decrease our income by almost half. As with most major decisions we make we try to include Heavenly Father and both my wife and I got the answer that this is what I needed to do. We took a hard look at our finances and realized it was going to be hard but we were in some good circumstance that would make it possible. As time went on my hours started to get cut back, we were barely able to make ends meet. We even had to go to our bishop for help a few times. As you can imagine I began to complain about our situation and questioned the answer we received. We endured this for 2 years and things began to change.
While all of this was going on our ultimate desire was to move to St. Johns and work at one of the plants. We prayed continually, almost pleading, for Heavenly Father to help us to get to St. Johns. We had a significant experience in the celestial room at the Mesa Temple that confirmed that we were to go to St. Johns and that all would be well. But year after year of submitting resumes to TEP and getting no response began to take its toll and I began complaining about that too. We knew we got confirmation about what we were supposed to do and we were doing it but we didn’t understand why nothing was happening. Finally, after 5 years of waiting I got a call from TEP and I got hired into operations and everything was good. We moved to St. Johns and I worked in operations for 10 months. Shortly after I got out of training a job announcement came out for an environmental position. The main requirements to qualify for this job was that the candidate have experience in meteorology, environmental testing and regulation and power plant operations. I was a shoo in for the job so I applied and was able to land it. To our great joy and relief what we had been praying for we were blessed with.
Before I even knew what I wanted the Lord was already preparing the way for me and my family to receive major blessings. When I look back on the last 12 years I can see every time we were blessed and that the Lord’s hand was in it the whole time. Yet, all I could do is complain about everything. I had to join the Air Force to adopt my daughter, what a blessing. I had to learn meteorology for a career I didn’t know I would want, another blessing. I was prompted to go back to school at the worst possible time to qualify me for my ultimate career, again another blessing. I took a job that almost ruined my finances but would give me the experience I would need, blessing.
President Monson said “A grateful heart … comes through expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His blessings and to those around us for all that they bring into our lives…” For some, it’s easy to have gratitude for the things that we have and the blessings that we see, but the lesson I learned is to always have a spirit of gratitude for the blessings we don’t see no matter the circumstances. When our time is finished in this mortal life I have a feeling that we all will know how much the Lord was in our lives preparing a way for us to receive his blessings. Gratitude is the faith that we know the Lord is always there.
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