Hello Life: He's a Firefighter!

8 years ago Kyle told me he wanted to be a firefighter.

5 years ago he became an EMT, moved to Bakersfield, and started working for Hall Ambulance.

2 and 1/2 years ago Kyle finished paramedic school and started testing for fire departments.

The last 2 years have been a journey of tests, waiting, interviews, checking the mail, praying, waiting, more tests, more waiting, more praying, a HUGE application and background check, a lie detector test, a HUGE interview, and he was IN!!! Praise the Lord! Kern County Fire finished their recruitment list one last time before starting testing again and they opened their training doors for Kyle Underwood... and 27 other anxious recruits.

The Lord continued to show His faithfulness over the next 19 weeks as we learned to seek His peace and trust His orchestration.
There were moments of unclarity and I can remember the tears of frustration, disappointment, and bewilderment. But I also can feel the presence of God as Kyle and I grasped hands so tightly and just had to choose to rely on the Lord's strength and the ultimate truth that He would be glorified no matter the outcome.

When we discovered Kyle's vision wasn't good enough...

Deciding LASIC was the only way to honestly meet the standard...

Quickly finding openings and funding for surgery...

Only to find out that the county didn't allow you to work for a year after having LASIC...

Letters were written. Phone calls were made. Battles were fought.

Multiple times we locked fingers or closed our eyes while on the phone to pray for understanding, guidance, and a joyous spirit through it all.

By the grace of God, we have an extremely hard working, passionate, courageous firefighter in our family. (Did I mention extremely good looking?)

And after 4 months of studying, training, sweating, bleeding, drilling, quizzing, socializing, testing, and growing... Kyle was pinned as a Kern County Firefighter.