Just wanted to shoot out a quick update on Jeff's job and his knee for anyone following that. We've had a lot of questions on why Jeff was asked to resign from Schwans. I'll give you the long version here.
Last August (2008), when he started, the job was part salary and part commission. He was given a schedule of sorts that showed where his sales needed to be each month. After the initial training (about a month), the salary part went down each month as the commission was supposed to rise to compensate.
Unfortunately, Jeff's route was somewhat neglected before he took it over, and it took him a long time to build relationships and his route. In November he was bringing home about $450 / week, which wasn't enough to cover much and we'd discussed the need for him to find other employment. About that time, he slipped on some ice and whacked his right knee on the step of the truck. That put him out of commission for several weeks.
About the time he got back to work, they announced a new compensation plan, which would have a constant base salary and have commissions added to that. The base was enough for us to live on, and the company had designed a new schedule with a slowly increasing sales quota. Jeff thought that was do-able, so he stayed on.
Around May, however, the regional rep threw out those sales growth plans and upped every one's quota to a set rate. Jeff was far below this as were most of the reps in his depot. His depot manager, in an effort to get his guys selling more, imposed mandatory longer hours (be on-route at 8:30am and could not get back to depot until 9pm) and required Saturday work if the quota was not fulfilled during the week.
Over the next three months, the screws kept getting tighter, the hours longer and worked counter-productively for most of the guys in the depot. By July, the 14+ hour days, six days a week most weeks was exhausting Jeff, and not reflecting positively on sales. We knew he couldn't keep it up much longer, but his anniversary date was coming up and at that point he'd have some vacation.
Jeff's always been open about his working Schwans as a temporary stop-gap until we leave for Kenya, and, at the end of July, his boss asked for a set date that Jeff would be leaving. We don't have one of those, so his boss asked for his resignation immediately, but agreed to give him his vacation. We found out the next week that his depot had hired three new drivers and they needed to make room for these guys.
We're not sad, and we're not panicked. At this point, we don't even feel like the Lord is pushing us to find other employment. Actually, we feel the Lord's hand in this entire situation. We'd been praying very hard for God to relieve some of the pressure Jeff was feeling and also very hard for our funds to come in so we can get to Africa. I'd been having difficulty with making calls for appointments to share our ministry. (It's very discouraging when people ignore your emails or don't return your calls.) With both of us now working at sharing God's call on our lives, we're able to connect with many more people who have a heart for Africa or who want to be a part of an amazing growth in the church there.
We also found out that Jeff will need arthroscopic surgery on his knee. (The one that was damaged in his November fall). The kneecap is out of alignment; he has bone spurs under it, and there is a tear in the meniscus that needs to be mended. He's scheduled this for August 20th and will need four to six weeks of rehab after that. He would be out of work anyway. At this point, we're praying for Workman's Comp to cover the claim and for Jeff to be able to use the specialist that diagnosed him to do the surgery. (Workman's Comp wants him to go back to the WC Dr. who wiggled his knee and said he didn't have a problem!)
So, there you have it. God is in control. We're at peace with that, and we're anxious to leave for Africa by end of September!
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