A three-month notice was unheard of in the corporate world. But, after two-plus years of my working at Marine Midland Bank, which had recently been acquired by what is now known as the HSBC bank (then the 4^th largest bank in the world), we were setting out on a new career path. Having moved over from my first job out of college in the scientific research and development sector, the business side of computer work was not satisfying. I am sure that had I stayed in either line of work, now 50 years later, I would be looking back at a very lucrative and high-income career and enjoying a comfy retirement. Upwardly mobile was a term not yet invented but would have been an apt description of our situation.

But, enough of helping big corporations become more efficient, Mary and I had made the decision. It was what I call our “Geronimo” moment. We took a plunge of faith to leave behind a good income and our starter house and cashed in our meager retirement plan. I handed in my resignation in May of 1979 at the ripe old age of 29, and with Mary and our eight-month-old baby, we dared to trust the Lord with our financial needs as we launched into what some would say was a ridiculously crazy move. Could God do miraculous things in our life if we struck out like the early disciples of our Lord? We were going to find out.

We had an acceptance letter from Dallas Theological Seminary to begin my first semester in September 1979. It was now May, and Dallas was 1,300 miles away. The first challenge was around the timing of when to tell my boss about my plans to leave the company. A new project was about to start with me being the project leader, and it didn’t seem right or fair to wait until just before we left to tell my boss and the team. We decided that I would give a two-month notice, knowing that the company could very well respond by giving me a two-week notice, which would have been well before our intended time to depart for Texas.

My boss was quite surprised and passed my unprecedented resignation notice up the chain of command to get advice on handling this. A short while later, I received a personal, hand-written note with this encouraging comment (as best as I can remember it): “Dear Mr. Gianotti, I am personally familiar with Dallas Theological Seminary and think it is a fine institution. I commend you for your choice of a career change, and if there is anything we as a company can do to help you in your transition, don’t hesitate to ask.” It was signed by a senior executive vice president of the corporation, whom I had never met. Amazing! The remainder of my time with the bank went smoothly as I served like a consultant. My department even gave me a going away party. We took this as God beginning to affirm our decision.

As soon as possible, I used my remaining vacation time to sell our house, rent a U-Haul and move our earthly possessions to Texas, where we stored it all in our friends’ garage (who had preceded us to DTS by one year). I secured a great job, with the interviewer telling me it would be waiting for me when we arrived in August to live there. Wow, God works in wonderful and fast ways!

With the job situation resolved, we put in an offer on a modest bungalow, and it was accepted. By this time, we had a contract on our house back in Buffalo, so things were falling into place. We returned to Buffalo with the plan to finish out my time at the bank (while living temporarily in Mary’s parents’ home just across the Canadian border), turn over our ministry responsibilities to others, say our goodbyes and head out on Aug. 1 for the life that awaited us in Texas for the next four years.

We soon discovered that God doesn’t always lead us in expected ways but often tests our faith with surprise twists and turns in the road. A few days after arriving back from our “successful” trip to Dallas, a letter came in the mail from the mortgage broker in Texas (remember, this was pre-internet) that our application for a house loan was denied. The reason was that the company I listed as my future employer had never heard of me, and thus there was no guarantee of income source. After investigating matters further, it turned out the interviewer had no authority to offer me the job officially, and the personnel office had no record of me on file. It was true, I had nothing in writing, but I had his promise—which was apparently of no use.

Now our house in Buffalo was sold, our furniture was in storage (in our friends’ garage) in a distance city, and we had no house or job! We would have felt completely insecure, except we believed we were in God’s will to make the move, and so we kept moving forward with our plans.

In those pre-internet days, all job hunting was done in person. It was a boom time for technology in Texas in those days (1979), with many tech companies moving to the state because of its favorable business environment. So it shouldn’t have been hard, once we arrived there, to land a part-time job in my field. Or so we thought. I had many offers for full-time positions, but that was not why we were moving there. The job placement agency told me I could have my pick of companies, given my background and varied work experience, but he didn’t give much hope for finding part-time work in my field.

Mary and I had developed personal convictions in several areas that made our situation challenging. We were committed to Mary being a stay-at-home mom with our plans to grow the family. After the first priority of our individual commitments to the Lord, our second priority was (and is) family. Our desire to study at DTS and go into full-time ministry came third. In the midst of all this was a deep commitment to trust God for our income. Yes, we could have taken out education loans with the idea of paying them back after graduation, but that would just postpone the challenge to a future date when by all accounts, our income in full-time ministry would not be very lucrative and paying off loans would be extremely difficult. We didn’t want our education to hamstring us in the future. Some might say we should have trusted God to help us pay off those loan payments in the future. But we felt that trusting God should be now, not in the future.

Further creating a challenging situation for our faith was the fact that, given the anticipated class schedule, the only days I had available to work were Mondays and two half-days per week. Was God up to this? If not, we were betting everything on believing He could make it happen. But if not, we would take inspiration from the response of Daniel’s three friends who were about to be executed for not worshipping a statute of the Babylonian king:

“Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Dan. 3:17–18)

God was testing our faith in the furnace of impossible circumstances. We would live as long as we could on our savings, which was enough to cover the cost of first-semester classes and books, and we could live off the rest until mid-October. Our friends graciously allowed us to live with them until things resolved. But if the money ran out, I would have to withdraw and take a full-time job, with the idea that we had gotten it all wrong and this was not the direction God was leading us. However, we were convinced this was where God wanted us and our faith remained strong.

It was early August when we arrived, so God had plenty of time to work things out for us, two and a half months. I began classes fully believing God would somehow provide. However, by early October, with only enough money left to keep us going for one more week. Mary and I began to discuss the reality of what was before us: there was no sign of a miracle on the horizon and our financial dilemma had become acute.  (To be continued)