Joli encouraged me to take a personal retreat recently, so I took her up on her offer. It is hard to take a personal retreat when we have three little ones at home, so I made the retreat short: 8-11am this past Saturday. I did have a very good time all by myself in prayer and reading God’s Word. I had a lot of time to think and reflect on the past and possible future events of my life.One of the things I really struggled with this past week was work! 2008 has been a real challenge for me personally, because our business is really struggling. The economy in San Diego seems to be getting worse. My sales have been in an all time low! I have been in such a slump. My dad and others have been very encouraging by saying that it isn’t me but the economy. I guess that is true, but I am still meeting potential clients. It just seems like it is 10x harder to sell a project for the price I want this year, and that really gets a salesman down in the dumps.This past Friday was one of the worst days of work I had in awhile. I had a $35,000 job negotiated and ready to go. The owner gave me his verbal approval after several days of asking to come down on my price from $38,000 or so. We both agreed to go ahead and I just had to get everything signed and scheduled. The hard part was I had to work with his contractor, so it took forever to get it signed. I went on vacation, came back and realized we still had not received paperwork or a start date. Right before I left, the contractor said it was a go to and he would get back with me to see when we could start. Well, this Friday I contacted the contractor who said the owner is not going to do anything with him and told me to contact the homeowner directly. So I called and the owner said he was going to use another paint contractor! What a blow to get! We were almost completely out of work for most of our employees and I thought this was the perfect job! I could not believe it was completely cancelled.I also had another appointment scheduled last Friday where the owner said, “We want to meet and go over the contract.” It was another very large project. I drove out to their home, and to make a long story short…they were NOT ready to commit. They basically just wanted some questions answered to start comparing Apples to Apples. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and worn out when looking at our empty schedule board. I left early to go play disc golf by myself. I figured that would help me to deal with some of the stress.It was that afternoon that I received a very encouraging email from my father in law, a brief encouragement from my dad over the phone and a loving response from my wife that helped me to not remain discouraged over the entire weekend.The Saturday retreat helped me to turn my eyes back to the Savior and know that He loves us and will take care of us. My business and life is completely under His control. He encouraged me with the Psalms such as 116, Ps. 56:3-11, and parts of Psalm 86. He will never allow us to go hungry and He will never leave or forsake us! David called out to God in the day of trouble, and the Lord delivered him from ALL his troubles. I sometimes think his troubles were not just his enemies but the day to day struggles of life! God wants me to rest in His goodness and righteousness. He does not want me to go through life thinking that I am the one who has to provide for my staff. He uses me as the salesman to bring in the work but it is still God who is at work! I am learning to be humble and rely more on His help in all that I do!Thank you Lord for encouraging me with your people and your WORD!