The Story of Elko

Dave began applying for PT jobs clear back in April.  He was having 2-3 phone interviews a day!  It was so crazy!  Good though!  We decided that we just wanted to apply to as many jobs as we could and then go from there.  Well, he had 5 jobs come through.  He was offered a job in Bolivar at CMH, a job in Colorado, a job in Murray UT, a job in Preston ID, and a job in Elko NV.  We all of sudden wished we only had one job offer so we didn't have to decide!  :-)

Elko flew us out the beginning of May.  They paid for everything and wined and dined us!  They were so good to us and the director was great!  We liked the other therapists, the job offer was AWESOME, and we just felt good about it.  The only hard part was housing.  Every time we went out looking for housing, we would get back to our hotel so frustrated!  My parents even came out to help us look and they couldn't believe it either.  It was very discouraging.  There was not much for sale and everything was so so expensive.  Houses wouldn't stay on the market very long because so many people were moving there.  It was just insane. 

No matter what we did, no matter how hard we tried to get Elko out of our heads, it just would not go.  Elko was always there.  We really wanted to stay in Bolivar or go home to Preston.  I told my mom that we couldn't get Elko out of our minds and she told me, "Well, just stop praying about it and come home!"  haha.... just joking of course.  We both did not want to go to Elko.  We didn't want to start over.  At the same time, Bolivar had been such a blessing to us and we would hate to get to the other side and realize we missed out on the things we experienced in Bolivar and the friends we made there.  We knew in our hearts that that would happen again in Elko if we gave it a chance.

We decided to take the Elko job.

Dave had to apply for a NV license and could not start working as a PT until he had it even though he had a license in UT.  It was frustrating.  Looking back now, it gave us 2 more months in Bolivar, which I am grateful for.  His start date was scheduled for July 9.  If he still didn't have his license by then, he would just have to work as a Tech and not get paid the PT rate until his license came through.

In June, Dave went out West with the Wilkins fam to try to get his license to move faster and to find us a place to live.  He did find us a house that we made an offer on.  They countered by asking if we wanted to lease the house.  OF COURSE!!  No one in Elko would lease or rent because they all knew their house would sell shortly.  AND, there was NO WHERE to rent!  They had miners living in tents!

The plan was, if we didn't have a place to live, I would stay in MO and Dave would go out and work until a) we found a place to live or b) we sold our house.  We decided NOT to move our stuff to UT because Elko was paying for our move so we only wanted to move our stuff once so it would all get paid for.  Well, because we had a place to live, we decided we would all move together.

So we started the move.  We had the truck all loaded when we got the call that the owners/realtor sold our house out from under us.

We didn't have a choice at that point, so we headed out West.  It took us forever to get to UT.  Dave and I were so tired the first day that we had to stop every hour or two so we didn't fall asleep.  The truck could only go 65-70 so that didn't help.  It was a very LONG 2 days!!!

We finally made it to UT, dropped Kaylee and Cole off at my parents house and Dave, Tenley, and I headed to Elko to find a place to live and for Dave to START his new job as a PT TECH (boo)!  Once we got there, EVERYTHING FELL APART!  EVERYTHING!  That is all I am really going to say about what happened just because this blog is public so the specifics are best left off my blog :-)  It was such a hard decision.  I cried and cried and cried everyday we were there.  I couldn't believe this was all happening!  We had everything we owned in the truck, I was pregnant and hadn't seen a Dr in 5 weeks, we didn't have a place to live, and we were going to quit this job.  We were making the decision to walk away from an AWESOME job offer to go back to Logan, live with my parents, and start the job hunt again with no insurance for any of us.  I felt terrible for Dave, I am sure the weight of taking care of his family was weighing pretty heavy on him!  He walked into the hospital and quit.  We had to go back to the office and pay for our move that we didn't have the money for and pay for his NV license that he still didn't have.....which makes me SO mad!

We didn't completely leave Elko without any options.  Dave had been making calls to all our previous job offers.  Bolivar was still open, Preston kinda changed into something different but it was still open, and there was a job in Murray on a different floor that was open.

We headed back to UT in the truck with broken hearts and low spirits.  What the heck just HAPPENED!!!

The next day, Dave had an interview in Murray.  We ended up not getting it, which was discouraging but Dave was able to start working as a PRN all over Cache Valley for Mountain West Physical Therapy that next week.  He actually makes more money working that way and has been getting full time hours so far.  If he can continues to get himself full time hours for 60 days, they will hire him full time and we can get insurance.  We are still applying ALL over.  Dave has a few interviews this week.  Thankfully we have SOMETHING to get us by and we would be fine staying with them.  We just want to keep our options open.

We aren't really sure why were suppose to go to Elko.  It has been hard trying to figure out what our purpose was.  We do know that our house falling through was actually a real blessing and a sign that we weren't really suppose to stay in Elko.  For now, I have decided that we were suppose to go just to let God know we were willing to go wherever He wanted us to go.  I do feel like if we hadn't taken the job, I would have always in the back of my head thought, "We should have gone to Elko".  The offer was just too good, the job seemed too good, the boss seemed too good, to just let it go.  Plus, like I said before, I would have thought, who did I miss out on meeting, what experiences did I miss out on because we chose not to go to Elko.  I kinda feel like we might have been blessed by it all by ending up back in Cache Valley like we both wanted to eventually.  It was a hard way to get back, but we are back and it feels good to be back!

For now, things are ok.  We are getting through and we have a job.  If we can get some insurance things would be great!  I am sure something will come through soon!

Dave still does NOT have his NV license!