Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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This will sound very strange I know, but I have to share a ridiculously amazing praise with you all.  Today, I was laid off from work…which might sound like bad news, but on the contrary, it is an amazing blessing of God’s goodness and provision!  I work for a large architecture firm in Dallas, and given everything going on in the economy, it is greatly affecting this industry.  Many projects that were thriving are now being put on hold by nervous owners.  Before leaving for training camp, my firm had to lay off 33 people…the first time it has laid off anyone in some time.  Upon returning from training camp, a friend of mine, seemingly randomly, mentioned that given my circumstances, it would actually be a very good thing if I were to be laid off.  I had never even considered it before…yet it was so obvious and right before me…but I was oblivious!  So beginning that night, we both began praying for that.  The next day, MY project I have been working on for a year was put on hold!  Everyone on my team of 15 people was to be moved to new projects effective immediately.  This quickly turned into sort of the perfect storm for me, because all of the sudden…overnight, it now became a beneficial thing for me AND my company for me to leave early.  Because there are currently more people available to work than projects to work on, me leaving, opens the opportunity for someone else to be given a new project to work on instead of me.  So I made an appointment with the head of my department, and basically pitched the idea of volunteering to be laid off.  To my joyful surprise, he had already begun to consider the idea and was very receptive.  He even commented how strange it was that my project went on hold NOW of all times.  He thought if it were to go on hold, it would have happened months ago.  God’s timing in all of this was IMPECCABLE.

That conversation was a week and a half ago…and today it became official.  They have given me a severance package that is equivilant to everything I would have received had I stayed until the middle of December, as I had originally intended to do!  Now, I have been given the remarkable gift of 6 weeks of TIME to prepare for this trip…and I’m still getting PAID for that time!  Amazing!  God is so ridiculously GOOD!  But, as joyful as this day is for me, I am also painfully aware that for a LOT of other fellow co-workers, it was a devastating day as they heard the news they were laid off as well.  Please pray for them.  It was a slight comfort when my boss told me that my volunteering to leave did in fact save one person’s job…thank You Lord for that!

So, that’s my news for the day…PRAISE God for the unlikely ways He blesses us!  🙂