Rough Economy

Right now Aaron and I are trying to decided where we want to end up in the near future. Gratefully, Aaron still has a job - there are so many people in this sort of field (landscape architecture) without jobs right now - a little scary! In fact, in the past month the firm Aaron works for has laid off about 7 people and Aaron's entire group got 10% pay cuts and 36 hr. work weeks. (I'm excited about the 36hr work week, but trying not to think about the pay cut.) Aaron is so talented and such a hard worker, but if there's no work, there's no work and they have to let even good employees go. Aaron's pretty sure the lay off's aren't over. We're trying to be optimistic, but we also have to be realistic and plan for if he lost his job.

(I tried to upload some of Aaron's work, but the files are too big I think. So, hopefully I'll be able to put them up in a future post.)

Aaron's dream has always been to teach at BYU-I someday (which is why we did the master's program in Moscow, only now BYU-I really encourages new hires to have a doctorate). So, we've been looking into some PhD programs hoping to find one that will allow him to get the degree without having to be on campus and still be able to keep his job here (not much luck with that). We've actually looked into some of the PhD programs at the U of I. It would be really weird to go back there - not in a bad way - just weird because we never thought we would ever see Moscow, ID again and a lot of the friends we had there are gone now. The ONLY reason we would even consider a PhD is for Aaron to have the opportunity to teach at BYU-I. But, we obviously can't guarentee ourselves a job there just because Aaron has a PhD. It would be so awful to go back to school (the irregular hours, the homework, the loans, etc) and not get a job at BYU-I and then try to find another job (especially if the economy is still bad).

Aaron has talked with some of the professors at BYU-I to get their advice and feedback about getting a job there. They have asked him to come and teach (sub.) this coming fall and spring while one of the other teachers is taking a sabbatical. Sounds like a great opportunity but, we would be out of a job afterwards. So, Aaron has told them no. For now we're just going to stay with his job here (hoping it lasts).


It seems like a lot of the talks in this past conference were about making it throught these rough economic times. Here are a few things from Conference that really comforted me:

In Pres. Eyring's talk "Adversity" he spoke of a man who had recently lost
his job.

"When I asked his wife on the day he lost his job if she was worried, she
said with cheerfulness in her voice, 'No, we’ve just come from the bishop’s
office. We are full-tithe payers.' Now, it is still too early to tell, but I
felt assured as they seemed to be assured: 'Things will work
out.'"

I am grateful for the peace it brings me in knowing that we pay tithing! Even if we did lose our job and face some hard times, I know we would be okay.



In Elder Christofferson's talk "The Power of Covenants" he told of a family who had lost their home and ALL their belongings in an earthquake. When the wife was asked how she could still have a smile on her face, she said,

"I have prayed and I am at peace. We have all we need. We have each other,
we have our children, we are sealed in the temple, we have this marvelous
Church, and we have the Lord. We can build again with the Lord's help."

There were also so many talks about going to the temple. We don't need to be afraid if we are worthy to go to the temple and go often.

In Elder Stevenson's talk he said that even young children are encouraged to touch the temple because Pres. Monson said, "as we touch the Temple, the Temple will touch us". So, for FHE this week we took the girls to Temple Square and let them touch the temple.

Carly

Ellie