It's been over a month...

Today is March 1st and it has been over a month since I posted here. This last month has been full of many ups and downs and my prayer is that the rest of the year will not follow suit. I'll try to catch you up on some of the things that have happened over the last month.

Jan. 25th was my 43rd birthday. It was pretty low key. That afternoon we received an e-mail that greatly changed things for us. The e-mail was a final straw which caused us to sever ties with The Great News Network. It was a hard decision to make, but over the last month the Lord has re-affirmed that we made the right decision.

Because of this change, we had to change domain names and re-work our website(which is still getting re-vamped). Our new ministry name which isn't really that new to us, as it's the name we had before joining up with GNN. We've gone back to Master's Key Ministries. You really wouldn't know that there was a change, except for our name and that Gene won't be going to Bootcamps any more. We will still be doing the same things we were before; meeting up with friends to evangelize on the streets every Friday night, and we will be adding some new family evangelism activities. We love teaching classes; equipping and encouraging others to share their faith in Christ, and we will be teaching a class on the 10th in Baytown.

On the 4th Gene spoke to a youth group at a Philippine/American Church. The people were kind and very welcoming. The youth were very attentive and receptive to what Gene had to say. Their pastor, Pastor Dindo, has a great heart for evangelism and wants his people to learn to share their faith. We look forward to hitting the streets with some of the people from this church.

Lindsay has been suffering with asthma/allergy problems for quite a while, we've tried many things, but most of them are ineffective. She began to get worse and on Feb. 1st I took her to the doctor again. She had a terrible sinus infection which was putting quite a lot of pressure on her ears; causing them to hurt a good bit. The doctor gave her a three week course of antibiotics, prednizone, and some decongestant. The next week we had a drastic change in the weather which set her asthma off and by 2am on the 10th we were headed to the hospital. This was our first time to go to the hospital due to someone's asthma. They gave her a couple of breathing treatments which did wonders for her. The hardest part was getting out of the hospital. They had several critical cases come in and every room in the ER was full. It took 2 1/2 more hours, just to discharge us. During the interim, Lindsay and I became rather slap happy due to the combination of no sleep and her drugs... we were quite the silly pair. Our Monkishness took over in rare form. As we sat in our room with nothing to do, we began to notice all of these things that were out of place. The game became for me to straighten up, but to make sure none of the nurses could see me through the glass door and windows. First there were the pens and items on the counter, they were just sort of scattered around. Then we noticed that the rubber glove boxes weren't centered in the dispenser. One of the trickier items was the hospital gown tie that was hanging out of an overhead cabinet, which was on the other side of the curtain and right by the sliding glass door. Lindsay was finding new things for me to "fix" as she played lookout for me. After the 2 1/2 hours we were able to straighten the whole room, feeling much better about it all. We were finally discharged at 7am and came home to crash for the day. This adventure wiped Lindsay and I out for most of the weekend. She did much better after her treatments and the doctor gave her a prescription for a nebulizer and albuterol so that she could do treatments at home. The treatments have helped a great deal, though the drastic fluctuations in temperature have played havoc with her asthma. I took her back to the doctor on Tuesday and her sinus infection is still here, so we have started another round of antibiotics and prednizone.

On the 19th Caroline came down with a stomach bug, and since then things have gone downhill on the health end of things here. Caroline is hardly ever sick, so I was surprised at her coming down with something. She was over it in a couple of days, but then Hannah came down with the same thing, and Rachel came down with an upper respiratory virus. Rachel's is still going strong, and last night Caroline awoke coughing. This morning she sounded just like Rachel. Pray for them... and for me through all of this.

The only other bit of news for me was that we bought a new-to-us vehicle a couple of weeks ago. My old van was getting to the stage of needing many repairs, you know, the money pit stage, and we decided to get a Toyota Sienna. We debated between it and a Suburban for a while, but chose the Sienna in the end. I love it, and believe a mother must have designed some of the features, as I love them. It even has hooks in the back for Wal-Mart bags so that they don't slide around the back of the van. I think my favorite part is the cd player, I'm able to listen to music now, which I hadn't been able to do in my other van, for quite a while.

Well, I think that brings things back up to date. I'm going to be starting some special projects around the house and will hopefully be posting about them here. I will also be doing an interview on Cindy's blog in the next week or so, I'll post here when she has posted it. The next week will be quite busy as I have two birthdays, a washer repairman coming and a class to prepare for, as well as all of these sick girls. So, if you think about me, send a prayer up.