When I was about thirty, I had just graduated from college, and a month thereafter my first child was born. A few weeks earlier we had been kicked out of our rental home (it had sold suddenly) and we were living in a trailer on a dirt lot out in the sticks. It was a dire situation.

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I opened the fridge and there was a can of tomato sauce. One can of tomato sauce. That’s it. In our checking account we had $55, the precise amount we needed to pay our tithing. So, with a long exhalation we decided to “cast our bread on the waters”. I bummed car rental money from my mom and headed to San Francisco on a crazy lead– a job as an elementary school teacher.

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I got the job and we were soon on our feet.

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Rewind two weeks. There was a job I really wanted, and that paid very well. It was as an employment specialist at a local college. I really applied myself to getting that job. I was horribly disappointed when it didn’t work out. But it turned out to be a much better thing for my life. I wouldn’t have grown nearly as much by staying in my home valley.

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When I saw the ad for that job I thought, “Wow, if I could ever make that much money I would be set!”. My third year of teaching I was making that much money. Of course, the astronomical rents in the Bay Area made it not such a huge amount.