Good Things Come..........To Those who wait!

[~Brian~]

Good morning all:

I posted this today because I feel really good! Why do I feel good? Well, I'm gonna tell you!

In the last two months I have been having issues with the way things have been happening at work. Things have changed so much between 2021 and 2022, that I had to reevaluate a lot of things in the way we used to do some of these things. The church helps us take care of the thrift store, and the way we used to do it is that we would end up paying our own expenses, our own bills, and we would ask the treasurer to be able to help us pay our bills every month period because the church is taken over that responsibility, my responsibilities are a lot less, but I still maintain a lot of my records so that I know where we stand if somebody should ask. Right now we haven't spent too much money, but I would assume that eventually we might be able to if a situation arises that requires it.

So far, everything is fine: the church takes care of everything we need, and if I need anything as far as money goes, I have to ask the finance person in charge of that. Soon, she will take over the treasurer's position, which is the person who usually writes the checks and pays the bills for the church. This is an important position, because it takes care of a lot of things dealing with finances. I deal with my own finances as far as records, and I I'm in constant contact with the finance people because I want to make sure that all of our records are right, so that reports at the end of the year no matter how short they are, will be as accurate as possible.

Now for the good news: this week, I found out that one of my volunteers, who happens to be the finance director, and who I work with to be able to do additional sales outside the building, told me that she recognized the thrift stores efforts, and my work ethic. In the last two weeks, we have made over $673: about 326 of that was made while I was downstairs in the thrift store, and about 100 of that was Venmo transactions. I was recognized for my hard work, and my willingness to push really hard to help the church.It made me feel really good to hear that, and because I've heard that, I know I have a good team , people that really care about what we do , and it makes me feel good that I do not have to worry about where I am as far as my current status. That has already been cemented: I can continue to do this as long as I feel I can do it, and I doubt that I will have to worry about losing it. There's always been talk of changes coming, but I was always in this position where I felt like there were just rolling in like a steamroller , and taking something from me.

about a month ago, this all changed. I had an hour meeting with our new pastor at the church. At that meeting I discussed a lot of my concerns, and a lot of the problems were some people were making decisions without my consent, or without my knowledge. Things were being done and changed week to week, and I finally had to say something. This has been dealt with, and while we all have to make changes and sacrifices, I have to make such a sacrifice and change.

Effective immediately: I have been told that I am the executive director of the thrift store, and that no one can take that title from me, take that responsibility away from me, or countermanded me unless it is the pastor or the trustees.  Further and this is the best news: I have been appointed the associate Webmaster of the Trinity United Methodist church's website and its Facebook page. My responsibility will be to make sure that this website is functioning, is updated, and I am responsible for adding and deleting content site wide. This is one of the most important jobs that I think I've ever had in my career working in the community. It is a perfect job for me, because I am very well versed in website design, I have to learn a new interface, and it's a little harder to deal with than my WordPress sites, but at least I have a way to make the transition quite easily. I have to copy content from my website on my.com domain, to the new location on our new org domain.

Of course, this also means that in a couple of years, I may lose my dot Com domain:  so comes the sacrifice: I'm willing to sacrifice a domain if it means that I am able to do more of the work that I feel that I am most capable of doing. Managing the thrift store is an incredible gift given to me by one of my friends who ran the store for 7 1/2 years before retiring in 2017. I now have the torch, and even when we have changes like this, we make the sacrifices in order to make the store run effectively.The church wants to bring the store into the church as a whole, making it a ministry, but I keep telling the church administration that they already are in control of the church , and they already have the thrift store, it's just that we changed the way we operated. They have taken most of the responsibility of paying the bills, and I am responsible for making sure that we have what we need, and managing the thrift store is my main priority. Secondarily is my website : now that we have an agreement about this, I am a lot less nervous about things, and I don't have to worry about what may happen.

take care!

Brian

[Babygeebee]

That is very good news Brian.  Congratulations!  Keep up the great work.  I'm so happy for you.

[Rachael-Little]

Fantastic Brian, I’m sure you will do great as you have a sharp mind and know your stuff as it were