Pam Padgett ... teacher
At one time I had a job doing secretarial work, but found that I was becoming
increasingly bored. I turned to God and laid out before Him how I felt
and asked if there was some type of work I might be able to do that
would be more interesting to me. (I didn't have any idea what this
might be.) But I also told God that if He wanted me to continue doing
secretarial work, that was fine and I'd try to continue doing this to the best of my
ability. I just wanted God's will to be done.
For a time I didn't hear or see anything else to do, so I
continued in my job.
Then one day my boss asked me if I would be willing to set up a pc to
use when doing my work. Computers were just starting to be used in
offices at that time. I told my boss I'd be willing to try to do this
but didn't know anything about computers. I asked if I could take some
classes to learn about computers, and he agreed. So I found a schedule
of computer classes offered at a nearby college and reviewed it with my
boss. One of the classes we chose was called "Basic". Knowing that I
knew nothing about computers and needed a basic understanding of them,
we both thought this sounded like a good class for me to take.
I looked forward to starting the classes we chose and thought that setting up the pc and doing my work on it might make my job more
interesting to me. I wondered if perhaps my prayer was being answered, not by doing
another type of work altogether, but having something added to my
current work to make it more interesting to me.
It turned out my prayer was being answered, but in a very different way than I could even imagine.
The first night of the "Basic" class, the instructor reviewed what we
would be covering in the class. Surprisingly to me, this was not a class
giving a basic understanding of computers. Instead, it was a class in
the programming language called "Basic". We were going to learn how to
write computer program code. As soon as the instructor gave some
examples, I immediately knew that computer programming was what I wanted
to do. One thought kept going through my mind I believe from the Holy Spirit ... "This is it"
... this is the type of work that would interest me and "fit" me
perfectly! All the way home from that first class I thanked God for
working it out for me to learn about programming.
The other class my boss and I chose helped me setup the pc at the place I
worked as a secretary and I started doing my work on it. In the
evenings after work I took another programming class and continued to enjoy programming.
Within a few months after finishing that class, I was hired as a
part-time programmer/part-time secretary at a small company. About a
year after that I was hired as a full-time programmer at FedEx and
continued to enjoy programming, working there over 20 years until I retired.