Day 63 – Transferred to California
I used to come home for lunch in Minnesota. Our first son was born in Minneapolis on May 29th about a year a half earlier. Coming home for lunch gave me a chance to see him and my wife. I had finished lunch and lay down to take a short nap like I usually did, and the phone rang.
My wife said it was headquarters on the phone, so I got up to take the call. There were some initial exchanges and then I was told that they needed to transfer me to California, so that I could oversee the state and the Western Region which was made up of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Hawaii.
California was one of the biggest works in the organization at the time and with the other states added, it was quite a massive work. My wife was from California, so it was ideal for her to be back closer to her family, however, my family reacted very differently. After I got off the phone with headquarters, I called Mama in northern Kentucky to tell her that we were being moved to California.
Now Minnesota was only about 12+ hours driving to where she and Swede lived on a farm in northern Kentucky. When I told her we were moving to California, she burst into tears. My stepfather Swede, grabbed the phone and in a panic said, “Who died?” I told him no one had died; we had just been transferred to California. To which he replied, “Oh, for god’s sake, I thought someone had died.”
To Mama, California was on the other side of the world, and she thought we would never come home again. I told her it was only a few hours by plane, but she still didn’t like it.
In a few weeks, we were packed up and flying to San Francisco, then on to Stockton, CA where the state headquarters was located in the northern part of the San Joaquin Valley. I didn’t have to worry about Minnesota’s gloomy winters anymore, California for the most part was a real sunshine state year-round. One major issue was that my wife was about 6 months pregnant with our second child. This meant that we would have to find a doctor, a birthing center and work everything out before the baby was born which ended up being April 8th. It was already late January, so this was a lot of added pressure.
California was a massive work and along with the other states in the region, I ended up traveling and teaching on the average of four days a week for the entire year both in state and around the region, and this went on for the five years we were there. It was fun, exciting, challenging, and wonderful but it put a big strain on me and my family. Traveling to Hawaii twice a year wasn’t bad, and all the states were beautiful with wonderful people everywhere. It was an amazing time of growth for me and the work which prepared me for an even bigger work in the years ahead.
Since I was coming from Minnesota, I thought it was funny when I did a cookout at the end of January and invited friends over who were all wrapped up in down coats and gloves. I was in a short sleeve shirt and felt great…what a contrast.
California would be a very different world, as I would find out, but I really loved being there and the people were wonderful. During those five years, I did everything from snow ski in Yosemite, to climb Mount Whitney (the tallest peak in the lower 48 state), to salmon fishing off the coast of San Francisco, to deep water fishing (200+ feet) off the Farallon Islands (the breeding grounds for great white sharks), to getting my black belt in Marial Arts. It was a fantastic time for me and my family.
As I stated earlier, I am an avid reader. One of the first books I picked up was Irving Stone’s book “Men to Match my Mountains” about the settling of California, Nevada, Utah and the wild west. The title is based on a poem that says it all. Here is the opening…
Bring me men to match my mountains by Sam Walter Foss
Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains,
Men with empires in their purpose
And new eras in their brains.
Bring me men to match my prairies,
Men to match my inland seas,
Men whose thoughts shall pave a highway
Up to ampler destinies,
Pioneers to cleanse thought’s marshlands,
And to cleanse old error’s fen;
Bring me men to match my mountains–
Bring me men!
This was California, an untamed, untapped resource of great magnitude and this is what I was there for. As they say, “Hold on to your seat belts, we are in for a wild ride!”
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