St. John the Wonderworker, Bishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, and spiritual father to one of my own patrons, Father Seraphim of Platina, continues to intercede powerfully for the Healy family.
As I've noted in an earlier post, I've taken on asking St. John to pray for me that I would always be able to adequately provide for my family, including being aware of possible honorable sources of income outside what I'm currently doing, as well as that God would just make things happen. Well, St. John's prayers have again been answered.
Next semester was looking more and more uncertain, in terms of teaching loads for me. But as it turns out, it was much worse than I'd thought. Having taught for Loyola now for something like five straight semesters, and normally with two classes, I had begun to "count on" the availability of teaching through my department. Little did I know that such was not the case. The class list for next semester has only about a dozen courses, and only one of those could I have conceivably taught--it was the only evening class. And given that I'm a) part-time graduate lecturer, and b) unfunded, I am at least theoretically way down on the bottom of the totem pole. So, the odds of me getting the only course I could have taught are minimalist to say the least.
All this, as I say, was happening and I didn't even know it. Then Oakton's department chair emailed me about teaching some spring classes. As it turns out, she had three for me to choose from. I gave her a tentative affirmative on a class, then called my faculty contact at Loyola. His message, left on our answering machine and forwarded to me by Anna, basically said, "Take what you can get from Oakton." I emailed Oakton giving a firm yes on one class and asking for one of the other two. Within an hour the reply came back: you can have two classes.
So I'm set. Oakton pays a couple hundred less per contract than Loyola, but given that it's either a total of a few hundred less than what I'm used to getting for the semester or nothing, I'll take the shortfall.
Praise and thanksgiving be to God, who both provides for us all our needs, and continues to glorify and honor his wonderworker, St. John.
Posted by Clifton at October 23, 2004 09:01 AM | TrackBack