This is the thing: life moves on. Time stops for no man…or woman. There were countless times I said to Mike, ‘when you retire, we’ll do this or that’. And now here we are! Two weeks have passed and it has been fabulous having Mike home.
Truth be told, he has swapped out one job for another. Twenty years ago, we had a friend who worked in travel and she was looking for a computer programme to manage bookings and itineraries. Mike dabbled in writing one and thought if she needed one, other travel companies would too. I was at home at the time, with two small children and so I set about calling travel companies and asking them if they needed a computer programme.
I phoned one, which I’ll call CT and the person who answered the call was very abrupt and surly. He didn’t give me half a chance to say 2 words – cutting me off with a major lack of interest. I asked him if I could give him my phone number in case he changed his mind. “Not interested!” So that was that. With thick skin, I started dialling the next number. An older man answered and he was all politeness. He kindly listened to my splurb, but would not commit to my offer to send Mike around, so I gave him my number and said if he would like to have a demo, just to let me know. He took my number down and we rang off. The next day, the phone rang. I answered it and to my surprise it was the surly man from CT. In a very short tone, he instructed me to send someone round. Turns out the second guy I called worked right next door to the first one and they had a conversation which somehow convinced the first to give me a call.
And so began a long term relationship between us and this major travel company. Mike wrote a rudimentary programme for them in DOS (it was about 1996 and before Windows). They started using it and never stopped. Over the years they have wanted upgrades, but by then we were raising and educating a family and Mike was holding down a full time job. He gave all the source code away and let someone else get the job. The someone else failed hopelessly and several more years passed. Then just a few years ago, they contacted Mike again. They REALLY needed an update now. 18 years had passed and they were still using his original DOS programme to run their entire operation, which had grown in leaps and bounds.
Mike went to see them and they made an arrangement for him to take on this mammoth project. Slowly but surely, outside of work hours, he has put together what has become a massive new travel system. It’s almost finished, but these early days of retirement have been spent checking and rechecking, tweaking and testing and soon it will be up to the training stage. We are grateful to God. Mike has written this entire system on his own, with no outside help. He has loved doing it and looks forward to seeing it go live in the next couple of months.
The moral of the story is never give up. If I had stopped after being brushed off by the CT manager, we would not have got the opportunity to do something which has turned into a wonderful relationship. The surly manager on better acquaintance also turned out to have a bark worse than his bite!
Luke 18:1
Then Jesus told His disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
Always pray and never give up.
Keep the smile going.
God bless you.
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂