Happy New Year!

We hope you had a wonderful holiday season. So many of you blessed us this year to make this a very memorable Christmas for our family. Thank you.

We went to Chico to be with family on Christmas Eve. It’s about an hour and a half from here. Actually, the town they live in is Orland, but not many of you would have known where that is. For a further discussion of northern California geography please see my other blog.

Sandie’s parents, Walt and Ann, along with her sister and three kids joined us Christmas day. We had a great time. They spent the night and headed home the 26th.

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve passed in a blur, as they seem to every year, of trying out every new gift, trying to figure out how to make them work, eating leftovers, and thinking about the next year approaching.

New Year’s Eve just doesn’t seem to be the same kind of holiday it used to be before you had kids. Staying up till midnight no longer holds the wonder it once did. Maybe it’s because you know someone under the age of 10 is going to wake up way to early looking for some food and they start their search in your bedroom and not the kitchen.

The week before Christmas Sandie was told that Kyler did not need to come in the 26th because it looked to them that his counts were going up. We both thought that was odd since it didn’t match up with previous timelines from other rounds of chemo. Usually it’s the third week after a round of chemo that his blood counts are at their lowest. We noticed he was really tired after Christmas and showed other signs of low blood counts. Well, on the 27th Sandie wound up having to take him in and sure enough he needed both blood and platelets and was neutropenic. They spent the entire day there at the hospital. He’s in great spirits now and his blood counts are probably on the rise. We’ll find out tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, he has his next MRI then. We’d appreciate your prayers for a clean one. He also has a hearing test next week and we are praying that there has been no more hearing loss since his last one. Also, Kyler is still having a great deal of anxiety each time his port is accessed. It does not really hurt due to the numbing cream we put on ahead of time, but he is nonetheless fearful. It seems to really depress him when we have to mention it the day before his appointments. “That’s what I hate about my life! That’s why I wish I wasn’t sick! I just wish I were in heaven! I wish I was dead!” That’s really hard for us to hear on a regular basis from him. How to respond to that has been a real challenge. Typically, we just hold him till it passes, but we also talk a lot about God’s plan for his life remind Kyler of Gods presence with us. I hope it is starting to sink in for him. It will never really make sense this side of heaven but it reminds Sandie and I that we have another day and God is working in the world and we can choose to join him in that work. We are invited to participate in his plan of rescue, redemption, and restoration here on earth. And we have to choose each day to opt in. If our boys can start to get that now, wow, how will that change how they approach life. It’s not a series of random events that happen to us, but we’re on an adventure, a mission. We’re ambassadors to this world of God’s love and mercy declaring there is a new way of life made possible through Jesus Christ.

On a different note, since I have not been church planting I’ve had opportunities to speak and lead worship at other churches. It’s been good to see what God is doing in other parts of the body of Christ.

On Sunday January 7th at 10:00 AM I will be leading worship at Bayside of Lincoln. They meet upstairs at Beerman’s on 5th St. in Lincoln. Yes, a church meets in a place called Beerman’s. Pretty cool, huh? It’s a historic building that was a restaurant/brewery. Pastor Ed Kemp is starting in interesting series called “Raising G Rated Kids in an X Rated World.” You’re welcome to join us there if you’d like.

We’re still trusting God to reveal the next step in ministry for me.

Thanks for your continued support and prayers. We love you.