I know it has been a couple weeks, but I am picking it back up and we are charging full-speed ahead!!!
Last time I posted I was wrapping things up with the time of my husband and I doing a rigorous morning routine at a cafe he was working at. I was 2 months pregnant with baby #2 and I was up at 3:30am driving up to the cafe baking the days goods and then switching off around 6am when my husband would bring our daughter up and I would drive back home….I have to say, as I have been recalling all of these things to memory my husband and I have had some very intense, “Can you believe we did that?!?” moments. It has been very interesting to say the least.
Okay, on with the story!
About a year after being at the cafe we were given an opportunity to work with a new up and coming breakfast/lunch concept. It sounded like an incredible opportunity for my husband, besides the cafe was about to close its doors! (oh boy) This new restaurant concept was going to be something my husband would be able to learn about how to get a restaurant up and going from the very beginning. We made the switch over to the new place and within about 8 months, we were headed to Wichita, KS to fill the roll of Regional Manager of the same restaurant chain.
Now here is a little back story to the move to KS.
About a month before we moved we were needing to sell the house we were living in. It was right as the housing market had plummeted and there were houses way better than ours which had been listed for over a year that were not selling. We kept praying and saying, “If the house doesn’t sell we aren’t going to be able to go.” It was a week before we were scheduled to leave and we got the call, an offer was made on the house. So in a weeks time we packed up the last of our things and headed to KS where we would stay for exactly 1 year to the day.
The trip up there was interesting to say the least. We had 3 little ones all under the age of three. The girls were in the truck with me and my husband and our son were in the u-haul. I actually remember at one point the sun was setting and we were driving directly at it and for about an hour my husband drove with his arm outstretched to block the sunshine from our son’s eyes. He was too short in his car seat to benefit from the visor and if the sun got in his eyes he screamed at the top of his lungs. I watched from my rear view mirror…it was too cute! We arrived in KS 15 1/2 hours later 
It was scary during the first couple of weeks. We didn’t know anyone (except the employees he worked with). We had no family closer than 15 1/2 hours from us. However, we believed the Lord wanted us there for that time. We learned so much as individuals and as a family unit. During this time, my husband worked INSANE hours. If you have any experience with the service industry, specifically restaurant management, you know how gruesome the hours can be. There were times where he would be gone from 10am until 1am and then have to get up and do it all over again. We felt very trapped. Up until this point we had begun living on credit cards. The job turned out to be a bust, which unfortunately we had grown accustomed to, and we would not get paid at times. We made attempts at finding other work, but the job economy farther north than Texas is vastly different. We couldn’t foresee how we would get back to Houston. It would take a lot of money and we didn’t have a job or a way to make payments on things like our outrageous truck note. Eventually, the Lord DID provide a job and we needed to be back to Houston within 48hrs. So, we literally sold everything in our house except our clothes, pillows, blankets and dishes and headed back in our truck a day and a half later after receiving the call he got the job!
The Lord has blessed us immensely with the new job. He works Mon-Fri and is home most days by 5:30pm. There is no issue with us receiving our pay either. God has definitely shown us favor and we are overwhelmingly grateful!
In March of that year my husband was introduced to a company called TEAM. It is run by a man named Orrin Woodward and its a typical MLM (multi-level-marketing company). Again, my husband was in somewhat of a spiritual drought. He was desperately ready to do something that would ensure financial safety and “get us out” of our current situation. He has always told me that during this time he felt like he was drowning.
Needless to say as a result of pressure, impulse and emotional pull he signed up.
*side note: my husband has given permission to share this story so please don’t think in any way these are my attempts at slandering him. He feels it is important to educate others on the deceptiveness of what a company like this can do.
Now if you are familiar with MLM, you know how cunningly deceptive things are in the beginning. If you know nothing about it, these companies make the claims that you are going to “own your own business”, “set your own hours” and eventually “fire your boss”. When you make attempts at trying to understand what your true start-up costs are, it’s always a skirted issue and with the TEAM business, the price changed and varied depending on how desperate they were to get people signed up. (in the “business”)
I had always had this uneasy feeling, knowing there was something not quite right about it. The hard thing about it was it sounded exactly like what we were wanting for our family, and the worst part was the claim from all the leadership that they were Christians. If you have ever heard of a cult (commercial cult) or been exposed to one, this business operated exactly as that. They were manipulative, they would make you feel guilty if you weren’t dedicating 150% of yourself to the “business”. It was manipulation at its finest and for 8 months, I did everything I could think of (without stepping over the line) to expose these people to my husband. However, in the last month I realized God was the only One who was going to be able to reveal to my husband these wolves in sheep’s clothing. So, I played along, talked with him about the business and made attempts to seem as interested as I could. I coupled that with much prayer and crying out to the Lord that He would help my husband to see the truth. Ultimately the Lord heard my prayer and granted my request and with having only sunk approximately $2k we left the business with having some dignity left.
Things could have ended a lot worse for us. We did wind up suffering a repossession of our truck and hitting the bottom as far as debt goes with having a-crewed more than$15K in debt. However 3 months after leaving the TEAM (they made claims that they were debt freedom financial gurus) we were able to start tackling debts and we are projected to be 100% debt free in May 2012. We will also be buying our first house, hopefully in a year! We honestly never thought we would be able to say any of this. One thing we have learned through all of this is that when we make attempts at getting out in front of God and trying to control our lives, most of the time God shows His Sovereignty in letting us fall and we fell pretty hard. I could talk for hours about our experiences, but I thought I’d give the highlights!
If you are curious about TEAM-LIFE or Orrin Woodward & Chris Brady, feel free to comment with your questions etc or you can check out AMTHRAX. It is a site we frequent to get updates on what is going on with others who have left the “business” and we are able to draw encouragement and also able to be thankful for how little we suffered when there are others who lost everything. I do not believe everyone who posts on the site are Christians, however, there are a good majority which are. This is not to say you still can’t learn the truths of this company and guard yourself.
I might seem like I am jumping all around with things, but my goal in sharing is that you too would be encouraged to trust the Lord and realize how important it is to be thankful for being exactly where you are. Being content is something the Lord is continually working with me on. I have a tendency to be hardheaded and I get disciplined often when I makes attempts at exerting it.
Another important thing is knowing what the Bible says about work. I have yet to find scripture that supports the thinking of sitting in a giant house and doing absolutely nothing for the rest of your life. I do know there are verses dealing working and how if a man doesn’t work, he doesn’t need to eat. Reading through the Proverbs you will find many verses dealing with the slothful and lazy man. The society and culture we live in larger reflect a selfish desire of riches, possessions and things. Jesus Himself said, “Do not store up for yourself treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” – Matthew 6:19-21
Unfortunately during our most lowly of times our hearts reflected desire for earthly treasures. I hope you would be challenged to examine your own heart and see where you are “storing” your treasure…
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“The Pharisees had devised a slick disguise, concealing their self-righteousness and hypocrisy under a veneer of religious zeal. They were careful to maintain the appearance of – but not the reality of – sincere devotion to God.” - (The Jesus You Can’t Ignore)
