The road to Arkansas?

Short story: Craig got a new job with General Mills, so we are moving to Arkansas in about a week and a half.  We are really excited!

If you want to hear the whole story, read on...
When Craig graduated from Utah State, he got a job here in Salt Lake with Zions Bank.  We have nothing but good things to say about the people he works with, and how they have been so generous and kind to us.  However, we have been feeling for a long time that change was necessary.  Zions doesn't provide a lot of room for growth, and being a financial analyst working in a cubicle all day doesn't quite give Craig the job fulfillment that he was looking for.  We just weren't sure what we were looking for, or where to go.

So last fall we applied for a few grad schools back east, hoping to get in, and just applying to see what happened.  We thought we would have a decent chance of getting in, but we didn't.  Since then, there have been a couple other job opportunities here in Utah that we thought might look promising. They still weren't Craig's dream jobs, but we figured they might open more doors, and at least he would be getting more experience.

Through this whole process, we didn't know specifically what to pray for.  We were still searching for a good fit for Craig, and for our family, so we were just praying for something to come our way - for things to work out. But nothing seemed to be happening like we thought it would.

Finally, we decided to just stay here in Utah with Zions for a couple more years, and then try the grad school route again, or see if something else came up.  So we started looking for houses (I am done living in an apartment - I need a yard!).

Meanwhile, Craig had been researching companies that he might want to work for, and he decided he was interested in the consumer packaged goods industry, and General Mills was on the top of his list.  He reached out to an old neighbor who now works for General Mills.  After talking with him, Craig got a few more contacts from General Mills.  He ended up talking to quite a few people from the company, and through conversations with all of these people, we learned that General Mills would be an awesome company to work for. They had a position that seemed like it would be a perfect fit for Craig right now, had excellent work/family balance, had a great leadership/managerial training culture, and tons of opportunities fro growth within the company.  So he applied for the position.

It wasn't looking like anything was going to happen with General Mills, so we started looking into a house more seriously here in Utah. But out of the blue, Craig got a couple emails from General Mills HR to invite him to interview!

And it felt right. We knew exactly what to pray for now.  After a series of interviews over phone and skype, we found out that he got the job!  What a blessing!

His title is a Business Planning Associate - but basically what he will be doing is analyzing sales of a certain General Mills product, and then going to their Walmart client and helping Walmart sell the product better.  So it is a mix of what he is doing now (analyzing) with a sales twist - an opportunity to build relationships and work with people.  We feel like it is a perfect fit.

We found out he got the job at the end of April.  Since then, we have just been waiting for his background check and drug test to clear.  It was something we were obviously not worried about, but he ended up having to re-take the drug test because his sample was too diluted.  He drank too much water?  It was crazy.  And there was an issue with getting the right documents from Brazil, when he interned down there for 6 months.  It all took a LOT longer than we anticipated.  We finally realized that we needed the Lord's help with this part of the process as much as we needed His help getting the job in the first place.  Miraculously, once we really remembered that, we got the all-clear Monday (today). We will move quickly to get out to Arkansas by June 1 - we pretty much have a week and a half left here.

It has been amazing to see the Lord's hand in our lives, guiding and directing us to Arkansas.  I know that He answers our prayers, even when it may not initially look like it.  But things have worked out WAY better than we could have planned.  We feel so incredibly blessed.  I am excited for our new adventure!

Post edit: We decided to push Craig's starting date back to June 10, giving us a little more breathing room as far as the move goes.  So, it won't be quite as rushed.