Greetings to you. My name is Scott B. I am 47 years old and I live in the small town of Boonville, Missouri with my 36 year old wife Shannon and our 6 year old daughter who has special needs. The reason I am sending you this message today is because I am requesting prayer for my job situation. At the present time I am working two jobs in Boonville because I am not making enough money in my primary job in order for it to be my only job. Working two jobs can be stressful at times and makes for some really long days on Mondays and Wednesdays which are the two days when I work both jobs in the same day (although for the past couple of weeks I haven’t been getting scheduled on Monday evenings so I suspect that my hours are being cut at my 2nd job).
As I previously mentioned I work two jobs at the present time. I work 40 hours a week Monday through Friday at the Boonville Correctional Center working in the mail room. I also have been working 18 hours a week as a cashier at Loves travel stop just outside of town. I am in the situation that I’m in today due to some poor decisions I made a quarter of a century ago when I was in college. My original major was going to be meteorology, but when I got a couple of years into the program at the University of Kansas it became abundantly clear to me that I had gotten in over my head and wasn’t going to be able to complete the program because I needed to be successful in both chemistry and calculus and I did very poorly in both. What I should have done is hired a tutor or asked for help but I didn’t do that. Instead I dropped out of college during the Fall 1991 semester and just worked full time at McDonald’s. It didn’t take me long to see that I had made a big mistake by dropping out of college and so in the fall of 1992 I went back, but without a clear plan as to what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up majoring in sociology not so much because I was interested in it but more because I saw it as the easiest way for me to get a bachelor’s degree. I knew deep down that I needed to get a bachelor’s degree in something otherwise I would be working in dead end jobs for the rest of my life. As it turned out I didn’t have a plan as to what I wanted to do with that degree and I find myself 25 years later working two dead end jobs because I don’t earn enough in one job to effectively make ends meet.
Before I go any further I just want to say that I have sent this message out to tens of thousands of churches over the past 5 months requesting prayer for my job situation. Some of these churches have probably received this message more than once but I must say I am extremely disappointed in the very low response rate I have been receiving from these churches. If I had to put a number on it I would probably say that my response rate from these churches has been between 5 and 10 percent. I know that most churches are leery about messages like this because they think they are spam messages. But I can assure you that I am a real person in Boonville, Missouri who is reaching out and asking for prayer because my situation seems to be quite hopeless. If you have doubts as to whether I am a legitimate person requesting prayer for my situation then I ask that you pray and ask God to reveal to you that I am indeed a real person and that my request is legitimate.
I very much want to find one better job to replace both of the jobs that I currently have, but I am running into a couple of major obstacles as I try to accomplish this goal. First of all I majored in sociology in college and that has proven to be a totally useless degree. And secondly Boonville is a small town of less than 10,000 people and offers very little in the way of decent job opportunities. Columbia, Missouri is 23 miles away but honestly my wife doesn’t want me taking a job there because of all the wear and tear that driving 50 miles round trip 5 times a week would put on our aging vehicles, both of which have over 150,000 miles on them. I have signed up to receive job alerts from a few job listing websites but so far all I am seeing in Boonville are dead end jobs that pay less than what I’m making now. So as you can see I feel like I have several things stacked up against me and I don’t see much hope of anything happening to change the situation. I am asking that your congregation and prayer chain please be praying that God would open up a door of better opportunity for me right here in Boonville, or else provide a better vehicle so that I can take a job in Columbia. I am also willing to relocate if necessary but I don’t think that my wife has the same willingness because she was born and raised in Boonville and her family is here and I just don’t see her being willing to relocate even if it could potentially mean a better life for our family.
I am asking that you please keep me and my family in prayer over the next few months and I hope that you don’t feel like I’m asking too much. All I am asking for is prayer and nothing else. Thanks so much for taking the time to read about my situation and I wish you a blessed day.