When I was an in my early teen years some of my mom's friends would ask if I would babysit their children. But I didn't enjoy doing this. My younger sister, who was considered to be too young to babysit, enjoyed taking care of children. So I would sometimes have her come help me (especially with changing diapers!) when I had a babysitting job. And I tried to get out of babysitting jobs as much as possible. (As an adult this sister owned a child day-care center and loved doing this kind of work.)
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When I was approximately 15 years old my older sister got a job at the Dairy Boy in our little town. She enjoyed working there. So the next summer I got a job there. I was very glad to not be babysitting and assumed I would like working there as my older sister had. But I found that dealing with the public in this setting was very difficult for me.
However, I wanted to buy contact lenses, thinking they would make me look more attractive than wearing glasses. So I kept the job a few weeks longer, wanting to have enough money to buy contact lenses. (This turned out to be futile, for after I had endured this job long enough to get money to buy contact lenses, my mom wouldn't let me buy them.)
It was such a relief when I quit the job at Dairy Boy! It would have been far better for me to have quit as soon as I realized I didn't like working there.
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When I went to college I didn't know what type of work I would want to do when I graduated, what kind of degree to get. But I had very good secretarial skills, so I started working toward a degree in this field. I also got a job as the football coach's secretary. Although I liked working there, I couldn't see myself doing this long-term. Still, I didn't know what else I would like to do.
I had been born again when I was 14 years old and sometimes attended a Bible study at the college dormitory. One evening at the Bible study, one of the girls mentioned she was working toward a degree in counseling. The thought of helping people greatly appealed to me. I didn't know at the time about trying the spirits to see if they are of God, and I just assumed this idea must be from God since it came at a Bible study. So I decided to change to a degree program that would prepare me to counsel people.
(JB ... after I met Pam, I saw that she had been given a spiritual gifts of "helps" , I Cor. 12:28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. That gift would be working all her life creating a desire to help people in many areas but she came strongly into working at her assignment in the church when she began doing technical work when we began the blog for Jesus Ministries.)
As part of that degree program we were required to work part-time in a counseling setting, which I did during the last semester before graduating. I worked at a juvenile delinquency prevention and diversion program. It was awful! I could hardly wait for the semester to be over.
However, a few days before my last day of work there, the man who ran the program told me what a wonderful job I had been doing and offered me a job. I was so stunned that I wandered off without responding. But I was flattered that he thought I was doing a good job there and convinced myself that maybe I was better at this than I realized. So I accepted the job.
But I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing at this job, and decided I needed to take more classes to learn how to help these teenagers. I started working toward a master's degree in counseling psychology.
In one of the classes we were required to record counseling sessions. The professor told me how unique and effective my counseling technique was and that he was using my recorded sessions as examples for more advanced counseling classes. Again, I was stunned, because I didn't really know what I was doing. However, this professor's comments were another "hook" that kept me moving forward in counseling.
After 3 years I finished all the classes to earn a counseling psychology degree while, at the same time, working at the juvenile delinquency prevention/diversion program. I never enjoyed working there and was even afraid on a few occasions.
Finally I came to realize that, regardless of what others said and everything I had tried to learn, I didn't know what I was doing and didn't like doing this work. I quit.
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After working with my parents for a few years and taking some temporary jobs, I moved to Colorado and got a job as a secretary in the trust department of a bank. My manager was an attorney and CPA, so he administered some of the more challenging trust accounts. The work was interesting to me for the first couple years. But then I realized I was becoming bored.
I turned to God and asked if there was some kind of work I could do that would be interesting to me and, if so, to please show this to me.
This was in the mid-1980's and desktop computers were just starting to be used at the bank. Someone had given our department 2 of these computers, but only 1 had been taken out of the box and we knew how to do only a few things with that computer. Mostly it was unused.
One day, not long after I had prayed asking God about more interesting work, my manager asked me if I would use the computers in doing all my work. I told him I'd be glad to do this, but didn't know anything about computers. I asked if I might take some classes at the community college to learn about computers. He said this would be fine. So I got a listing of computer courses offered at that college and reviewed them with my manager. We decided I should enroll in 2 courses. One of the courses was called "Basic" which we assumed would give me a "basic" understanding of computers and how to use them.
At the first night of class, the instructor of the Basic class explained what we would be learning during the semester. It turned out this was a computer programming class using the programming language called "Basic". As he spoke about programming, I found I was saying to myself "This is it! This fits me! This is what I want to do!" All the way home I was thanking God, knowing this was the answer to my prayer.
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The Basic programming class was very interesting and enjoyable to me, so I enrolled in another programming class. I loved programming and wanted to start working in this field right away. So I prayed asking if there was any way to work as a programmer without spending several months getting a degree.
I was given the idea, I believe by God, to send a letter to all the computer companies in our area and explain how much I liked programming, what classes I had taken, and that I would like to work in this field right away. One small computer software company hired me to work part-time as a programmer and part-time as a secretary.
About a year later, when that company was nearing bankruptcy for the second time, I asked God what I should do and especially discussed with God my concern about interviewing for another job. Going to interviews was very hard for me.
Soon after this, information about a class "How to interview for a job", came in the mail. I felt led to enroll in that 2-night class and found it to be very helpful.
On the second night of the class, the instructor told me about entry level programming jobs available at FedEx and gave me contact information for a woman at FedEx.
I called her and she said if I would send her my resume, she would see that a copy of it was put on the desk of every manager with an entry-level job opening. One manager offered me an interview and then a job.
I worked at FedEx as a computer programmer for 23 years until I retired, and enjoyed programming very much throughout this time. God had certainly answered my prayer asking if there was any kind of work I could do that I would enjoy, and led me step by step to that kind of work.
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(JB) At the end of March, in 2012, God gave me a dream which showed me to start writing a blog for Jesus Ministries. Immediately I called Pam Padgett, knowing she had computer skills and could likely do this for us. (Within 3 days we were publishing a blog which went all over the world on Internet and cost nothing for us to do this. It was amazing to me. We were not limited and could send out as many exhortations to the churches as we wanted to do.)
God showed me to write books on Amazon. Since these books were self-published, we would have to do all the publication tech set ups. (I called Pam and she consented to do this for the ministry.)
In February, 2020, God gave me a dream showing me to begin Podcasts for the ministry and Pam handled all technical aspects for the Podcasts.
Then God showed me that Pam has a spiritual gift of "helps" (I Cor. 12:28), and she is ordained to do this ministry work just as I am ordained by GOD to do what I do.
To date we have the following downloads from church people all over this world:
Blog downloads: 1,186,626
Podcast downloads: over 30,000
20 e-Books published in the "Life in Christ" series on Amazon
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