Spirituality - Our Plumber Angels - Lessons on the Mountain

On a clear November day my wife and I set out to explore real estate in the mountains east of Jackson, Wyoming. We dropped our youngest daughter, then fourteen, with our oldest daughter who was in college a few hours away. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving and we planned on returning Wednesday night to spend the holiday with our daughters.

In our rented SUV and a suitcase of clothes that reflected our Texas lifestyle, we headed out of Jackson and down to Pinedale. I had recently left my corporate job to strike out on my own. Since I traveled with my consulting, we thought we?d find a place to live that we liked, it would be the first home location we had chosen since getting married thirty years before.

At the time our spiritual lives were in some upheaval and we yearned for a new start. Our daughter had been raped, then attempted suicide and we were just finishing some lengthy counseling over the ordeal and were trying to get the train of our lives back on track.

Our first stop in Pinedale revealed a cute little town of a couple thousand nice, friendly people, with moose grazing on the outskirts of town. We looked at one house and when the folks told my wife they went shopping once a month in Salt Lake, some four hours away, that was the end of that. We had a quick lunch in Pinedale and didn?t bother to tell our kids we had changed plans. Instead of heading further east and around the mountain back to Jackson we were heading south and west to Star Valley and the town of Afton.

As we headed south towards Rock Springs I could see from the map this was going to be a five hour drive down and around. I happened to see a road on the map about an hour south that headed west and over the mountain and dropped right down into Afton. It went right through the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It was a gorgeous fall day, so I ignored the two dotted map lines that was the outline of the road I?d picked, and we headed up the mountain. My wife immediately said, ?I have a bad feeling about this.?

Ignoring her feeling I plowed ahead. Three more times she would say, ?Ed, I have a bad feeling about this.? Four hours later, high in the mountains and deep in the forest we stopped at a ?T? in the road. Before us was two wooden Forest Service signs, with arrows pointing in opposite directions that read ? Afton 50 miles ? Pinedale 50 miles. While I didn?t admit it at the time I knew we were in deep trouble, it was 4 p.m. and about to get dark.

Instead of doing what my wife strongly suggested I plowed ahead towards Afton and one hour later, on a steep incline, we were stuck in three feet of snow. We knew we weren?t getting out anytime soon, much less that night. We had no cell phone, a few extra T-shirts, a Hershey bar, two diet sodas and a half tank of gas in our now buried SUV.

Dark surrounded us as my wife quietly wept next to me. We debated our next course of action as she humbled me in prayer. A former atheist turned Christian, I was still struggling with the spiritual side of my life since my daughters problems. I resorted to the macho, Marine Corp side. I was a Marine sniper for two-years in Vietnam and just looked on this as an adventure at first, an adrenaline rush, surely we?d get out of this.

The car was aimed up a small path heading to the top of the mountain. As I sat there in the black of night looking at the star filled sky, a plane went over. It was then it hit me, with my wife finally sleeping in the seat next to me, that we were in deep water and that I alone was not getting us out of this one. I had certainly been stupid enough to ignore my wife?s admonitions and get us stuck though.

We would later learn that we were fifty-seven miles from Pinedale and nearly ten-thousand feet up in the forest. We endured the night, cold and lonely and decided to walk to safety at first light. We were in our early fifties and not in great shape. Our clothes were light leather jackets and sneakers for shows. We were not equipped for the walk we were about to endure.

During the night my wife led us in prayer often. It was sometime in the early morning hours when I humbled myself and cried out to my Lord and Savior. I cried out to Him as never before and after some time could feel the warmth of His Spirit wash over me. I knew that somehow we would be rescued.

At first light we were off, heading down the mountain, committing to each other we would somehow walk for twenty-four hours if necessary to see our children. We left the SUV at seven a.m. and it began to snow. We walked patiently, feeling amazingly good, and reached the wooden signs we?d seen the day before. The signs were seven miles from our vehicle. We?d made the trek in about two and a half hours ? we knew we had help because we could not walk that fast on flat ground, let alone the snow that was increasing steadily.

We walked and prayed and walked and prayed and my wife grew weaker. I walked and prayed as I walked and the snow was getting deeper and coming down heavy. We stopped on one occasion to pray and it was two p.m. We?d been walking for seven long hours in the snow, the wind was picking up. As we started out again I noticed the light in my wife?s eyes wasn?t as bright and committed as it had been ? I knew we could not make the night.

As I walked trudging in the heavy snow across a high plateau at around seven thousand feet, I prayed as I had never prayed before. I prayed Lord, we have done all that we can. My wife is struggling ? we don?t want to die. Lord please provide us a miracle and provide it now. By three p.m. the snow was blinding. As I walked, looking ahead I thought I saw a small speck in the snow. What could it be? I was sure it was a mirage. I didn?t say anything.

We kept walking and soon a truck appeared. We waved excitedly as if they wouldn?t se us, the only two people in miles. The two men inside looked like they were right off a Marlboro commercial. They were plumbers heading to close down a new log house they?d been working on all summer. The man on the passenger side rolled down his window and said, ?I hope you two know you have someone walking with you out here today!? Indeed we did. He went on to explain they were supposed to be in and out by ten in the morning but were held up in town by an architect working on the house and the were running late.

We found out that the snow we were enduring was as they said up there the snow that shuts the mountain down. The elk had come down that night and now one would get up there until spring. We had walked seventeen miles when our Plumber Angels rescued us. The Lord had provided us with the miracle we asked for and saved us to see our children. He had rescued me from my own stubbornness and stupidity. He had taught me humility and that indeed He answers our prayers.

Ed Kugler is a former Marine sniper with two consecutive tours in the Vietnam War. He is also a former atheist and now a Christian. He as been changing for a lifetime. He is a recovering alcoholic, successful business leader who made it to VP of Compaq Computer with no college degree, flunked high school English and has written six books. He is the father of three, grandfather of three and has been married to the same woman for thirty-eight years and counting. http://www.lulu.com/nomorebsbooks and http://www.nomorebs.com

Finding a Good Plumber

Plumbers in the UK take on a wide range of tasks for in both domestic and industrial settings. In domestic settings they repair, maintain and install hot and cold water supplies, toilet fittings and waste disposal fittings. A plumber may carry out a wide range of work or may specialise in a particular area such as drain clearance, bathroom installation or gas work. Any plumber who undertakes gas work in the UK must be registered with CORGI. CORGI is the Council for Registered Gas Installers.

Over the past few years, the press has run stories about a shortage of plumbers. In 2003, the British Plumbing Employer?s Council estimated that the plumbing industry would need to recruit 29,000 new entrants over the next 5 years. This led to reports of City workers leaving their jobs in the hope of earning ?70,000 a year as a plumber. More recently, however, there are accounts of workers with plumbing experience from Eastern Europe are filling vacancies on building sites and a surplus of trainees trying to find jobs.

For the householder, this means that finding someone to deal with plumbing jobs around the house is now easier but householders still need to take care to ensure that they have found a plumber who can provide them with a quality service.

Hot Hints on Finding a Plumber

? Ask for recommendations from family and friends.
? Follow up on references if the plumber has not been personally recommended to you.
? Be very clear about the work which you want doing.
? Obtain written quotes from more than at least three firms and, if the job is clearly defined, ask for a fixed quote. If the amount of work involved is genuinely uncertain then check that hourly rates and call out fees are clear and reasonable and ask for an estimate of the time which will be taken.
? Avoid paying plumbers for labour up front before a job has been completed.
? Ask your plumber about his or her experience including experience of the type of work which you need doing. Reputable tradesmen and women will be pleased to talk about their experience.
? Check that you have an address and contact details for the plumber so you get in touch if there is a problem after the job is finished.
? If the job involves gas work, check that your plumber is registered with CORGI. Registration numbers can be checked on CORGI?s website - www.corgi-gas-safety.com. Operatives working for a registered installer will also carry a card which can be checked by a householder.

? Caroline Blatchford 2006

Public Relation for Plumbing Company

Some industry sub-sectors have a difficult time in setting up public relations plans and strategies. Lets look at a plumbing company for instance, it is a company type that everyone thinks nothing of until they need a good plumber and then they are at the top of our list for solving a major if not catastrophic potential problem.

But what kinds of things can a plumbing company do to promote itself and increase its community standing and goodwill? Well why not join in a Neighborhood Mobile Watch Patrol in the town or city. Help take a bite out of crime? Great, but what does this have to do with plumbing you ask? Well consider if you will the following factors;

PLUMBING COMPANIES: Plumbers are highly paid individuals and tend to know all the income property owners of the town. These property owners are the movers and shakers who are also involved in all the philanthropic and political groups in the towns. Plumbers handle many emergencies and are some of the most randomly scheduled professionals. No one can predict when or where they will show up next, including themselves. A criminal planning a break in hates these types of wild cards. Like locksmiths called out to help with lock out problems, they can be anywhere at any time for anybody. A plumbing company with multiple trucks can be a great asset. A small company with one truck can also have just as many contacts around town. Both large and small plumbing companies will be more than happy to help your program.

You see all this makes a plumbing company a valuable asset to the safety of the community and thus helps rank them at the top of our list. Such goodwill and public relations are indeed difficult to come by these days. So, consider all this in 2006.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington

Who's Plundering your Plumbing Business?

If you occasionally feel that you are working for nothing, chances are that you are.

How many times have you put your invoice in for payment only to have to wait for 30 days for your money? If this is happening to you and your business, chances are that your business is being plundered by pillagers.

Pillagers are those people who sneak around thieving from you. They seem to have an instinctive nose for any Plumbing contractor in business who is not minding his business.

By not minding his business, I am referring to any plumbing business that is lax-a-daisical about his accounting procedures and following-up on over-due invoices. Every time you have an over-due account, it means you are paying for that client’s job. So the question is, are you a Plumbing business or a financial services business?

It is the function of financial institutions to lend money, not a Plumbing Contractors. Any Plumber in business today has to be a good business person first. Why? Because no matter how good a Plumber you are, if you aren’t being paid at job completion you soon won’t have your own Plumbing business to grow into a business.

Business is about profits. Building profit into each job to grow a business from your Plumbing activities. Plumbing is how you make the money to grow your business.

In today’s technological world there is no excuse for not being paid at job completion every time. There is no excuse except excuses for being a bad business operator.

With the information highway that the Internet provides, there is training and information products readily available for learning any aspect of operating a Plumbing business you may need assistance with. There is no shame in acknowledging you need information. Besides, no-one even needs to know that you are learning via the internet anyway, but if you feel your business could be run better, then you would be a poor business operator if you didn’t seek out the information.

You didn’t ‘just become a Plumber’ did you? You studied hard and ‘did your time’ learning. What makes you so sure then that you can run a successful Plumbing business without learning? Just because you are an excellent Plumber does not necessarily equate that you are therefore a good business operator.

All new skills have to be learnt from the bottom up. Building a business is no different.

Treat your business like a job site. Plan it out, lay it out on paper, understand why you have to dig the ditch to the required depth before you lay the pipe – by understanding why things have to be done in your Plumbing business allows you to plan ahead. Once you have this planning done, you can then see what needs to be done to achieve the desired outcome.

Because you have a plan for your business you will be able to quickly see who or what is plundering your business and stop it before it becomes too late.

Pillaging is still a crime so make sure you aren’t the one responsible for plundering your own Plumbing business.

http://www.constructingprofits.com Showing contractors how to make more money ~ working less hours!

4 Tips To Know When You Need To Find A Plumber

Some of these plumbing problems are simply too overwhelming and difficult for us to deal with on our own. Even if you think you can do the work yourself, in the messy end that has to come, you will be glad you called a professional to get the job done properly. However, since hiring a plumber is something that a lot of us have little experience in, here are four things that might be good to know when you want to find a plumber who will get the job done right and at a fair price.

Always Ask Friends How to Find a Plumber

The first thing you should know is the extent of your particular plumbing problem. Remember, even if a problem only takes a few minutes for a plumber to fix, most of them have a minimum time fee that usually covers their visit and then some. This cost can be anywhere from a half hour charge or even a full hour base charge just for coming out to look at your problem and turning off a tap in your basement. If you have any reason to believe that, the problem is serious, get a plumber and have him or her correct the problem before any more damage can occur. Friends and family might recommend a plumber with a high reputation for service.

Find a Plumber- Licensed Plumbers are the Best

You would not want a backyard mechanic working on your prized vehicle right. Well, in that same sense why would you allow anyone not licensed to work on your home? It is always a good idea to have a licensed plumber working on your plumbing project. There is a lot to be said for experience and the proper training. Do not take any chances with your home. Therefore, we now realize a licensed plumber will provide the best service and they have the insurance required to cover any problem they might run into.

Always Ask The Right Questions

Knowing what questions to ask a plumber is almost as important as listening carefully to the answers he gives you. You need to make sure that the plumber you pick has had experience solving your particular kind of problem. Do not be afraid to ask direct questions that require a yes or no answer; this is your home you are dealing with here. A good plumber will not shy away from your questions and will often volunteer free information that may end up being useful to you.

Judging The Price

The more you learn the more you can expect when you find a plumber. Remember to always receive an estimate before work begins. Calling the plumber is easy; paying a plumber might be a problem for some if the cost exceeds their funds. Therefore, always ask for the estimate and then let the work begin when you find the lowest but best plumber for your project.

You can also find more info on Emergency Plumber and Plumber Contractor. Sressmanagementmethods.com is a comprehensive resource to known about stress management.

Help! - I Need a Plumber

 

Finding good plumbers in the UK is difficult. Need a plumber in an emergency and you’ve got a real problem.

There’s lots of articles available on selecting plumbers. We’ve all heard the advice - get quotes, follow up references and ask friends and families for referrals. All good stuff but it makes it sound as if people needing a plumber have a choice available to them.

This really misunderstands the issue which the average householder faces. Yes we do want to find a great plumber, that knowledgeable, polite, punctual, reasonably priced paragon of virtue but before we get that far, we have to find a plumber who is prepared to do business with us.

If you need a plumber in an emergency, you’ll either find the ones which have priced themselves out of the market and so are often available – Mr or Mrs “It’ll cost you!” or their more reasonably priced cousin Dave “Quickest I could get to you is next Wednesday.” Not great if you have a leak and it’s now Sunday.

Indeed the position is not much better if you are planning routine work such as having a boiler serviced or a bathroom installed. Getting a quote can be a challenge – getting the work started much more difficult.

Now, according to recent reports, the position should be easing.

Over the past few years, the press has run stories about a shortage of plumbers. In 2003, the British Plumbing Employer’s Council estimated that the plumbing industry would need to recruit 29,000 new entrants over the next 5 years. This led to reports of City workers leaving their jobs in the hope of earning £70,000 a year as a plumber.

More recently, however, there are accounts of workers with plumbing experience from Eastern Europe filling vacancies on building sites and a surplus of trainees trying to find jobs.

For the householder, this should mean that finding a good plumber who is available is much easier. The logic is fine but plumbers who are available for work are still an elusive breed. So if you have water pouring through the ceiling or your new bathroom arrives next Wednesday, read on for Hot Hints on tracking down a plumber.

Hot Hints for Finding a Plumber

 

• Asking for recommendations from family and friends is always a good first port of call.
• Check out one of the internet directories on-line – you can search for plumbers close to you and the better guides give the plumbers the space to provide details of their experience and specialist skills. Remember to mention the directory when you call – some have arrangements where the plumbers offer a discount.
• Look in your local parish magazine. Often the plumbers who advertise there live close by – in an emergency someone who is just down the road may well be quicker, cheaper and, more importantly, willing to turn out.
• Try your local paper. Some plumbers will advertise in the classified ads all year round, others will appear only when they are not busy – increasing your chance of finding someone who says “yes”.
• Ring your local letting agent – letting agents usually have a team of tradesmen and women who are set up to respond quickly to problems faced by tenants of the agent. Their plumber may be willing to help you.
• Call your plumbing supply shop – the staff get to know the regulars really well and are likely to be able to suggest someone who is not only good but who is available to take on your job.
• Plan in advance, every time, a friend has plumbing work done ask them who did it and if they were any good. Keep details of the recommended plumbers. Then, when the leak or blockage occurs you know who to ‘phone straight away.

 

Once you’ve found a possible plumber, do take steps to check them out. In reality, plumbers are no more likely to be rogues or cowboys than anyone else and most are extremely professional and hardworking. But erring on the side of caution is probably wise.

Take particular care if you are employing a plumber to carry out gas work. Check that your plumber is registered with CORGI. Registration numbers can be checked on CORGI’s website - www.corgi-gas-safety.com. Operatives working for a registered installer will also carry a card which can be checked by a householder.

Good luck finding your ideal plumber. If you find a really great plumber in your area, please do let me know via my website.

Caroline Blatchford is the founder of Local Service Guide which helps people to find the local services which they need in the UK. Whether you need a plumber, a restaurant or a letting agent, go to http://www.LocalServiceGuide.com