Hey Emmanuel!

This week’s post is more of a personal update than it is about anything going on at the church. Many of you probably know about (or have hired) White House Landscaping, which is the landscaping company that I’ve owned since high school. I started it in my senior year as a culminating project, and it was a fun and interesting way to avoid having a real job. Except for a brief furlough from the company while I was deployed to Iraq in 2009, White House Landscaping has been the place I spent my time for all of my nearly-adult life. This last October, though, my project manager ended up getting a hold of all the money the company had and drinking/gambling it away one weekend while I was away. Once I found out what happened it didn’t take me long to realize that I was going to close the business; projects were winding down for the year, there was no way to hire a new manager in time to recover the projects in progress, and taxes were due too soon for me to have the cash to spend my way out of this problem.

The odd thing about it was that I knew it was time to let it go. When this unfortunate event occurred, I was taking a Microeconomics class in my business program at Seattle Pacific University. One of the first concepts we learned about in the class was about “opportunity cost”. Opportunity cost is really simple, and it goes like this:

If you could be doing something that is better than what you are doing right now, stop what you’re doing and go do that other thing.

Even before I had a reason to close the business, my heart had been telling me that there were better things out there for me. Starting and building a business was a wonderful experience and every stupid mistake was an invaluable lesson, but I was ready to move on to bigger and better.

Pretty soon I was putting more time into my job at Emmanuel. Seattle flooded for a week in November and we put together an emergency plan to house 75 people in the gym for a week, and right after that we started our conversation with Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and within two weeks had installed a men’s shelter in the fellowship hall. I’ve been interning with Keith Phillips to take over some of the administration tasks, and I’ve been meeting with and learning from other organizations and individuals that are as connected to this community as I would like to be. I’ve started working with two engineers and another business student to write a plan for, and hopefully start, a business that will provide the freshest vegetables you’ve ever had while training and employing former convicts to reduce their likelihood of re-offense. I don’t think that any of these things would be happening if I had held on to my dead business.

It was a tough and sad thing to give up my company, and especially to have it happen in such an unsavory way. But now, I get to do all of the things that are better than my business.

IN OTHER NEWS:

The shelter is going great! I appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm and support for it. We are averaging about twenty men per night, so it’s been very successful. As always, we welcome any food that you would like to contribute! A gallon of soup, stew, beans, or chili is an easy way to give these men a warm and tasty end to an otherwise unforgiving day. To inquire about good times to donate food, or for other information about volunteering, email me at kirbyw@emmanuelphinneyridge.org

Kirby White

Community Concierge