My 2009 in a very small nutshell...

The month of January 2009 brought in many new challenges. I was operating as CEO for Blackwell and Associates Land Surveyors, INC, taking a full class load at University of Phoenix to finish up my Business Administration degree and being a husband to Courtney, and father to Molly and Wyatt. What’s different about this January is I had to do it without my partner Ralph. He was always there to say “yes that's a great idea, or no, don’t do that, that’s ridiculous.” His guidance in the operation of the business was most valuable. We now had many decisions to make to stay profitable in the New Year as the economy collapsed around us without him.

February I decided to drop out of school for a while to focus on marketing the business to different industries. This proved to be a valuable move. We began doing workshops for local Realtors to educate them as to how our industries overlap and to reacquaint them to our firm as we estimated the housing market would begin to slowly come back in 2009. As for other firsts in February, Molly and Wyatt played their first games of high school softball and baseball respectively. This was so much fun going to cheer for our kids! Molly loved being a part of the team, and Wyatt loved demonstrating his skill level out there with the high schoolers, he was in 7th grade then. Courtney had just returned to Florida Hospital, DeLand ICU for employment. Church life also proved to be most interesting. Our Faith Promise rally happens every February. Our goal this year was $100K to go to world missions. In the previous year we sent out nearly $96K to our missionaries. What a spectacular work God provided! 2009 didn’t seem to be starting off as well. We received only $46K in pledges at our main session. This was a HUGE disappointment for our team. After much encouragement we were able to secure a little better than approximately $70K in pledges. Even though our economy was suffering, God’s wasn’t and he has been faithful still today. My contact with the Missions team at CCDS has revealed that pledges have continued to come in throughout the year, yeah God!

March would present us with a whole new set of challenges at work. The firm didn’t have much work coming in as the market had not ‘rebound’ yet. Some of the workshops were producing jobs, but not enough. We needed to cut staff to continue to operate. It also happened to be my turn to present my core business presentation at my C12 meeting. I presented my plan to lay off approximately 20% of staff to help remedy our monthly losses, the same losses being felt all over our industry. However, my C12 group pointed out that my cuts were simply a band-aid on an arterial bleed and that more cuts were necessary. I agreed and one week later we lay off 85% of our staff and I began my 80-90 hour work weeks, again. This lay off, along with several other strategic cuts allowed us to continue to do business and meet our costs.

The month of April offered us no simple times! In the dreaded April 15th week several life changing events occurred. First, taxes…perhaps not so life changing, but on the 17th, I heard God clearly say “you need to go to Bible college.” I finally submitted and shared the news at work and discreetly to those in my inner circle. We planned to move to TN so I could be a Johnson student. You can read more about that day here.

May, June and July would be months of preparation to embark on this journey to TN. I had to train Bob to run the office, find a place to live in TN and be accepted to JBC in 3 months. This would be a most difficult task. We looked at several options for the business with regard to my departure. Find personnel to replace me, sell out to the competition, or attempt to keep the status quo until better times. Bob and Connie chose the latter so we had lots of work to do to educate them on the intricacies of running a land surveying business. This had to be accomplished while we looked for a place to live in TN. Mitch and Bobby Conner and myself took a brief road trip to TN to scope out a house. Mitch and I were educated about EVERY exit along I-75 and why we should steer clear of exit 146. Traveling with Bobby is so much fun! July 31 would be the final day of my 17 year career at B&A. This was a difficult time for my family and our friends. However, there was a huge party at CCDS and I even got to rap, kind of…That night was so much fun. I again apologize to the folks we scared that aren’t used to a Sunday night service of that manner.

August didn’t lighten up much. We made the move to TN with the help of some great friends! From people coming to see us off at the house at all hours of the night, and morning, it was a delightful and difficult time. We truly enjoy our intimate time with loved ones. When we got to TN, Nick and the Aten’s were tremendous helps! It was nice having some familiar faces in this strange place. Poor Nick got sick and spent most of his first night next to the downstairs bathroom of our apartment. Within the first couple of weeks we saw almost 10 bears on different hiking trips. It was amazing interacting with all the nature. Molly would say, “Gross.” We all started school, and Courtney went to work. This was almost identity shock for me. I was now cooking and cleaning and watching ‘my stories’. Well I would if we had television programming.

September seemed to be a leveling out period. We were trying desperately to sell our house in FL all while looking for one up here. Apartment living has proven most difficult for Courtney as she must sleep in the day time hours to work at night. Who knew apartments could be so noisy? School was going well for all of us. The kids seemed to be adjusting well with a few minor instances of severe home sickness. God was blessing us.

October was a spectacular time. I got to watch the leaves change in the Great Smoky Mountains. I had never seen that before. It was awesome! This is also the same month we sold, sorry, paid someone to take our home in FL. We were now out from under that mortgage payment! My mom visited us at peak leaf changing time. We enjoyed her visit very much. It is always nice to see faces from FL. It’s very comforting to know you guys remember us!

November was a great time as well. We found the house we wanted here in TN. We experienced our first TN Thanksgiving. You can read more about that here. I attended the National Missionary Convention in Peoria IL. I got to spend a lot of time with the Nathans as I rode to and from Peoria with one Nathan and stayed at the other Nathan’s house. BTW, his mom can really cook! That's Nathan Winningham, one of the Nathans.

In December, the kids got to see their first snow. This was so much fun! We rode sleds and snowboards. We made snow men, and my friend Brad pointed out that Wyatt’s bike made a snow/bike angel. I think we threw snow at each other all day long and some the next day before church. Speaking of church, we may have found ours. We have been visiting Woodlawn for about a month and really enjoy our Sunday School class. The senior pastor is my Basic Christian Belief professor, Charles Beckett, a great guy! December also marks the month of Courtney’s and my 17 wedding anniversary. I bought her a house this year for her anniversary. We closed the day before, on the 18th. We are still today working very hard on getting the house livable. Anybody who wants to come work or contribute in some fashion, feel free to do so. We hope to be in near the end of January. Looks like I will be learning many skills in this remodel.

The year has been just that, a year. We have suffered some and are better for it. We have enjoyed much and will continue to do so. I have enjoyed this adventure, for the most part. I can definitely see how missionaries experience higher highs, and lower lows than anyone else. I can’t wait to be there. Soon.

Happy New Year!