New friends to help us move

The movers delivered our things to our Lancaster house just days before school started in September 1987. Kathy insisted that we be moved in by the first day of school so the kids wouldn’t have the “new kid” label all year. Kathy was unloading boxes, and I was in the backyard setting up some things. An elderly neighbor across our back alley came over and started a conversation. She mentioned some family history she was working on and asked me if I knew anything about mine. I answered, “We are members of the Church, too.” She lit up and went inside to call our new bishop to report that a family had just moved in, and the mother, who was more than eight months pregnant, was unpacking. Within an hour, fifteen people from the new ward started showing up to help Kathy. Kathy’s role changed from unloading boxes and putting things away to overseeing their work and instructing them on where things should be placed. The beds were put together and ready for the night. The house was quickly prepared for living in. We are forever grateful to our our new friends at church. Our home in Lancaster, although run down when we bought it, is one of our favorites in terms of its potential. Due to my demanding work schedule while I was there, we were unable to do the fix-up. However, to this day, we can’t help but wonder what we could have done if we had the chance. It had a tree in the front yard that became known as “the family tree” because everyone climbed up and hung out in it. It was the perfect climbing tree.

Overcoming a learning disability

During our time in Lancaster, Kathy faced an interesting educational problem. We had a second-grade son, Ben, who was struggling to learn to read. In November, they began a discussion with us about holding him back at the end of the year. This did not sit well with Kathy. She argued that they should not have decided in November that he wouldn’t be able to read well enough by May. That was premature. Secondly, if they held him back a year, why would teaching him the same way next year help him to read better? He needed a different method of teaching…now.

Kathy proposed that she take him home every day during their class reading time. We only lived three houses from the school, so he was sent home daily during reading time. Kathy discovered he was interested in motorcycles, so she started buying motorcycle magazines as part of his reading studies.

Once, they were reading a story together, and he declared, “I can write a better story than this.” So, Kathy challenged him to do so. He dictated the story, and Kathy became his scribe. They polished it up and added illustrations. They put a bound book together. Later in the year, a school story-writing competition was held. Kathy entered his book. At first, the judges pulled his book out of the competition because, as they said, this book couldn’t have been written by a second grader. You can imagine Kathy’s reaction. However, by the end of the year, he was reading at grade level and advanced with the other kids in his class. Kathy still has her teaching magic.

The birth of our real relationship

Initially, I faced a challenging situation. With two hundred employees’ jobs at stake, the company might not survive if I did not do my job correctly, along with the rest of the team. I made every effort to ensure survival. I worked 70-hour workweeks, even mistakenly spending Sundays at work. I was always at work, so my interactions with the family were minimal. After three years of this, Kathy informed me she wanted to live elsewhere until she evaluated our future together. Since I had spent the past three years totally uncommitted to the family, she wondered if I was committed enough to remain in our family’s future. One company owner had a condominium in Palm Springs where she went to stay. I was given time off while we worked through this and I stayed home to watch the kids, allowing her alone time in Palm Springs.

I discovered that I no longer knew my family. After a month, Kathy told me she was ready for me to come talk things through. Kathy’s mother stayed with the kids as I went to Palm Springs. After some intense discussions, we decided to put our best effort into moving ahead together. We went to family counseling, which wasn’t a great experience because the therapist was inclined to blame Kathy for problems that weren’t hers. Kathy and I learned to communicate about things while they are still small, rather than waiting for a crisis.

This period changed the whole future of our relationship. And after some time, we became best friends. I now see that I should have worked fewer hours and spent more time with my family during this period. And I should have spent more time developing my spiritual self rather than experiencing spiritual starvation. Then, I would have been more receptive to the guidance from the Holy Ghost. I have learned that personal revelation is a powerful business tool. If I had worked less, better prepared myself spiritually, and followed the guidance of the Spirit, the company’s problems would have been solved sooner. I am certain of this. I’ve learned that God is much more intelligent than I am and is always willing to help me. But I must do the spiritual due diligence to be receptive to His guidance.

In time, we discovered a new way to handle conflicts. We discovered that we don’t necessarily have to make decisions right now. They can wait until the correct answers come. When a conflict arises, the discussion typically begins with something like, “When you do, it makes me feel...” And we begin by trying to understand each other’s position on the issue. We learned to keep talking until we both agreed on the solution. Sometimes, we don’t quickly come up with an agreed upon solution. I’m not talking about compromise, in which one wins this time and agrees to be the loser next time. We typically each start with our firm, differing opinions. But we soon realize that it’s not about “giving in.” As we continue to discuss, we discovered new options we hadn’t considered before. Eventually, an option will surface that satisfies both of us. This new idea wouldn’t have come if someone had just “given in” weeks before. And we both walked away believing we won. However, this process can take weeks or months to find the real solution. The wait is always worth it. Even after 50+ years of marriage, we still encounter issues that must be resolved in this way.

Forensic Accounting

It took three years, but we successfully finished an audit, and the bank lifted all restrictions on the company. In 1990, the owners sold the company to a billion-dollar European construction company. As the new owners came on board, they decided to eliminate local accounting, including me. And they replaced the past operations managers with their own manager. They offered me a position in the Bay Area, but I declined.

The new owners soon questioned the legitimacy of the purchase agreement. They were convinced that the previous owners, whom I had worked for, had deceived them by falsely overstating the value of the company. The a director of the new company contacted me to ask for my opinion on the sale. For some reason, they trusted me even though I was a part of the outgoing management. They then hired me to review the books, purchase contracts, and provide them with the details of the due diligence efforts related to the sale. After scrutiny, I proved to them that there was no intentional deception, although some of the receivables were old and proved challenging to collect. But there was no effort to hide that fact.

While doing my review, an employee approached me with an issue that concerned her. She had a DMV truck license renewal for a cement mixer that wasn’t in the yard but had never been sold. I took this to one of the former owners, a friend and mentor, and he then taught me how to approach forensic accounting. In time, I saw that the company’s newly appointed general manager had taken the mixer to a local dealer, sold it, and pocketed the money. I studied the transactions carefully. At each step in my search, I asked myself what legitimate explanations he could give for the missing mixer if he were confronted. I then went about disproving each possible legitimate answer. I did this until the only possibility was that the mixer had been stolen.

I put my case together and presented it to the company management at a remote location. I also discovered many more missing assets that he had stolen, as well as personal purchases he had made with company funds. His theft had grown to hundreds of thousands of dollars. They accepted my report and fired the manager. He was sometimes violent, and Kathy and I feared his showing up at our home to retaliate. The violence never happened, and we were safe.

Moving on…again

We challenged a family in our ward to a scripture chase using the seminary scriptures for the year. Both families prepared for weeks. For three-year-old Jacob, we marked his scriptures with drawn pictures so he could find them. He even won with a couple of scriptures. Both families prepared well, and it was a tough contest, but the our judge said that we had narrowly won. It was a great family experience.

In my job search, a firm in Orange County, California, made an offer that hit all my checklist items. I told them I would let them know the next day. During the night, I could not sleep and became increasingly restless. My mind became increasingly agitated. I then realized that I was receiving a Divine prompt to decline the job offer. I knew what I had to do, but had no idea why. The potential employer even increased the offer, but I still declined. I knew the Lord had another direction for us. One would think that the right job would be just days away. Months later, we were out of money and food storage and required help from the Church’s bishop’s storehouse. I was even running out of money to send out resumes. My last resume and stamp went to a construction firm in Fresno, California. They called. I met with the owners and received a job offer that I accepted. They moved us to Fresno, but Kathy and the kids stayed behind for several months until the school year ended and the Lancaster house was sold. The new employer put me in a furnished apartment until the family could catch up. When the new employer hired me, they purchased a brand-new car for both my business and personal use, but I had not yet received a paycheck. So, we went to pick up our last food order from the storehouse in a brand-new, untagged Honda Accord. I hoped no one would pass judgment on this unusual circumstance, and I have certainly learned not to pass judgment on others.