I want to share my good news with you. I have a new job and will start on Monday 16 May. How this came about is such as to make a short story long. So, here goes.

I have been working long hours six or even seven days a week for about eighteen months. Sometime I have been working directly on projects for my current employer and sometimes working on "my own time" to complete goals they set. For a few months last year that schedule precluded my participation in choir. For several weeks last year I even stopped attending church. Evensong was the only thread that kept me connected.

I volunteered to help with Veritas - but suddenly found myself transferred to a project in Torrance. I felt sorry about not being involved with Veritas, but I had a responsibility to try to keep the company afloat. The three months I worked in Torrance prepared the way so that we were able to move about 20 people off our payroll and over to other projects in Torrance. I proved that it could be done and I was the test case to prove that our team had the right qualities to make that transfer. But it cost me time away from choir, time away from church and time that I could have served the church.

During the past eighteen months my employer has dropped from about 150 employees to about thirty with plans to drop below twenty in another week or so. I held on and was deemed "too valuable" to lay off. All of that changed a couple weeks ago. The rehearsal schedule for "The Shepherd" included a Saturday morning rehearsal. The worship schedule included both the Saturday night and Sunday morning services. I planned accordingly and arranged my schedule so that I could be there.

The day before, however, one of the executives in this company decided to give me a new assignment. I declined because I felt the ethics of that assignment were questionable. He insisted. I stood firm - based upon my concept of ethics and because I was tired of working weekends. But, the rock that gave me a foundation to stand on was the rehearsal schedule for "The Shepherd".

My part in "The Shepherd" was insignificant - but it was an opportunity to contribute. I had already missed three months of choir. I had already missed the opportunity to help with Veritas. I had already missed too many of Rev. Marks' wonderful sermons. So I stood firm, declined the project and declined to work that weekend.

While no one admits the connection, come Monday I was on the unofficial layoff list for the next week.

I already told the story in choir last week about how we worked to protect everyone else in my group from layoffs - the best we could. Then, my employer seemed to be stuck with a dilemma. They did not want to loose me after all. So they made a few calls and came up with an offer to give me a significant pay increase if I would take a job in Century City while they restructure the company and try to come out of bankruptcy.

I had to think about that offer. I had some other opportunities in the works, though none would pay like that. But, taking that offer would once again pull me out of choir. That was not the only factor in my decision, but it counted. I declined the offer.

An hour later I got an email with an offer letter for a new job, in Irvine. Not as much money, but it is here, and the company is solid. I am grateful to the people who made that offer come through. But I am also grateful to all of you who prayed on my behalf and to God for being faithful even when I am not.

Throughout these last couple weeks I have felt an immense calmness. I know that your prayers and your thoughts were important in giving me that peace.

In return, I am sending this letter to you as a testimony on my behalf. Ultimately we only have one boss - one employer. People, in spite of what they might think, have only the authority which has been allotted to them by the one true God.

Robert E. Perrine