Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Adjustment

As of about 9:00 am this morning Brian officially signed and swore in for the Army...as a diver (think scuba diver, not coast guard rescue diver) . Apparently, the army has lots of ships. Divers maintain and repair the ships with underwater welding, do search and rescue and deep sea recovery. It was an interesting morning and definitely a reminder of how the Lord directs our path. On Monday Brian finally got to pick a position after lots of time and needing more or different papers for his packet. He tentatively picked Calvary Scout. Tuesday morning at 6 am we are at MEPS ready for him to sign and swear in. 7 hours later we discover he is missing a paper his recruiter should have taken care of and he can't sign. We went home tired and grumpy. Then today we were back at MEPS at 6 am to try again. This means we had to re-select a job. Today, diver showed up on the list. None of the recruiters at MEPS had ever seen diver come up as an option (it rarely does). There were 4 slots total for the whole nation. We almost didn't even consider it. But the more we talked the more it seemed right. Last night Brian was up until midnight because something seemed "off" about signing as a Calvary Scout. Divers have a low deployment rate, outside the military they are in high demand for search and rescue, cruise lines, and the oil industry (most start at $50 an hour). We started to wonder if maybe all the waiting and nothing seeming to work out had been for a reason. Today is the only day that diver will be available. We needed to be there today and sign for this job. Amazing how everything works out. So on January 4th he'll leave for basic at Fort Jackson and then 29 weeks of training. He has to make it through the first 3 weeks in Missouri (its apparently not easy) then he'll finish in Florida and we'll go to...we don't know where but I'm hoping for Hawaii