Before I dive into our adventures here in Henderson, I need to explain what got us here in the first place.
Kevin has worked so hard over the last 6 years and finally was at the last leg of school. He was to graduate with his Bachelors in Commercial Construction Management from UVU. What an accomplishment! I'm so proud of him. The only thing he had left before being able to hold his diploma was to get an internship. People asked us why we wanted until his last year to apply and our answer is simple: we didn't want to go into debt for an internship. He had a great, steady job at USSynthetic at the time with amazing benefits and with him working swing then eventually going to graveyard there was no possibility of being able to do school, internship, AND a job. So of course he chose the job and school. He wanted to support our family.
Upon his last semester of school (meaning from this past January to April) he applied to NUMEROUS companies in Utah for internships. He was to be done with classes at the end of April so he could either jump right into a full time internship OR full time job and use the first 200 hours of his job as his un-official internship basically. We really wanted to stay in Utah. His top places he wanted to work were Jacobson, Oakland, Big D, or Zwick. He applied for full time positions and internships and no one showed any sort of interest except Big D. Big D really went above and beyond for us. The guy he applied under was one of his Mentors at UVU for the competition he did in February. This guy basically told Kevin that they didn't have a spot for him, but that he wanted Kevin on his team so he would try his best to make it work. A month or two go by and we still hadn't heard anything from them. In those months of waiting to hear back from Utah jobs, we applied to jobs out of state as well. Some in California, Colorado, Nevada... nothing too far from home.
Then, the end of April came. Kevins work at USSynthetic was getting iffy... They make diamond drill bits and other parts for oil rigs. If you haven't noticed, the oil market isn't doing well right now. Its doing the worst its done since probably 2008 or 9. His company of 900 employees decided they needed to start laying people off. They first started by asking people to voluntary leave and offered a big severance pay. Then, ended up letting off 100 people all together. They thought that would be the end of it, but after crunching more numbers and seeing how low orders for their parts would be, they figured out they needed to let more people off. Kevin came home one morning and just told me he thought we should take the severance pay. Normally I would have been totally against it. But something inside me felt peace about it. I knew that we would hear back from one of these jobs he had applied for soon and if not- Kevin was a smart enough guy that he could find a good job in the meantime to help get us by. The severance pay was around $2800 after taxes were taken out. So we figured we could live a few months off of that and knew we also had money in our savings. This was a Monday, and he needed to tell his work by Wednesday that he was leaving. We prayed really hard for the next few days and felt good about our decision to leave his work. It wasn't easy- or necessarily smart in our minds but it turned out to be a great blessing.
He told his work he was leaving and policy is that you have to be done with work within one more work day of telling them you are leaving. However, Kevin worked in an area that was a little bit harder to learn than most areas at his job so its not fast training that they can just throw anyone on. The parts are different and more complicated since they are using CNC machines. He told his supervisor that he wanted to give two weeks notice but that HR told him he had to be done by the next day. His supervisor got on the phone immediately and called HR to tell them that they had to make an exception for Kevin. Luckily, they did. Kevin was able to stay for 3 more weeks which gave us much more money to save up for. The amazing part is, the day Kevin came home from telling his work he was leaving, he got TWO job offers. One from Big D, and one from Ledcor. However, both would be very different. Big D offered him a full time internship. No benefits, pay less than what we were making at USSynthetic, and no guarantee of a full time job after it was over. BUT- it was Big D! And there was a chance he could stay on full time after- and stay in Utah! We wouldn't have to move... it was a company he really loved, with a mentor he loved. Ledcor's job offer though was a full time salary position. He would be a project engineer making estimates/bids and doing a lot of other things- and be on a fast track to be a project manager. We would have to move to Nevada though. And he hadn't heard of the company before. The offered to pay moving costs out here and pay all of our cobra fees until their insurance kicked in. We could still use this full time job as an internship as well because UVU would just have us fill out some paperwork and have the first 200 hours of Kevin's job be considered 'internship'. We had some praying to do and huge decisions to make!
After alot of prayer and deliberation, we decided it would be in our best interest to come here to Henderson with Ledcor. We were to move here May 30th and Kevin would start his job June 8th.
Yesterday was his first day on the job and he loved it! More on that later.
So, now you know the back story on why and how we got here. Our adventures are starting and so far we love it. We are grateful for answers to our prayers and for jobs, insurance, and education!
