I find it hard to believe that an Abscess on Misty’s leg could be the cause on all this. There seems to more than one, but one popped and about a quarter cup of puss leaked out of it. One was twice the size of a walnut, and others are marble sized. She is on antibiotics for that.

It seems that this started a while back, and her body became weak dealing with it (because she doesn’t feel down there, she had no idea that she should be in some kind of horrible pain). As her body was weakened from that, she started to have trouble breathing, and the flu hit her. When the flu was being dealt with the doctors thought that she had pneumonia, but it was really that her kidney shut down.

Now Misty is being treated like someone with kidney disease, and will have to change her diet to deal with a weakened kidney. They were able to find blood work that was done way back when she burned her leg and infection had gotten in her bone and noticed that her kidney was at 30% in Feb 2008, but now it dropped to half that.

She is having a doctor come in today to see about having the Abscess (plural) lanced out, because the antibiotics that they would normally give, will hurt her kidney.

We have no idea when she will be able to come home, and that is frustrating for all of us. She has been in a Hospital just under 10 days, and is now at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans.

She is doing good, but she got really ticked (so bad that she didn’t want to talk to me on the phone) yesterday about all this, and just wants to come home.

I know that the devil is a liar, and he has no power to trap, hurt or kill my daughter. When Jesus died on the cross, He paid for every hurt that we have whether spiritual, mental or physical. When we call out to Him, His answer is yes because not one drop of His blood will be wasted.

It seems that we have been the devil’s focus these last couple weeks even to the point that people have lied about us and attacked us. I refuse to let all this junk stop me from trusting in the one true God, and I refuse to allow these events to make me call the truths of my Father God a lie. Jesus invested way too much in me, for me to blame Him for what the devil is doing.

We all appreciate your prayers and concerns for Misty, and I will keep you all posted.

Ok, if this don’t beat all… I seem to be able to blog from my phone.

I have had a busy weekend, and apparently I managed to seem to get nowhere in some areas of my life. I was able to go see Brandon Decker being born (well I didn’t actually see it, but I heard Liz down the hallway), and I got to go eat dinner with Mallory for her birthday.

Mallory makes me proud, and so do Liz and Shawn.

I guess I am left to wonder as I have all these changes going on, why can’t people embrace the great new things that the Father in Heaven brings to them. Why do people feel the need to take the sweetness of life and mix it with the bitterness of things long passed?

Yes the devil is a lying thief, but God said that He will repay us what the devil stole. No you might not get re-payed exactly what was lost, but what you will get is way better. The only thing that makes it seem like less, is when we don’t put any value on what is given us. That is when we loose the blessings of God.

I do not want to do that! I don’t want to be guilty of putting a low value on what God has for me. I don’t want to take lemonade and make lemons out of it…

It is said that you will reap what you sew, and I agree whole heartedly.

What a person needs to do is seek the Holy Spirit to know what seeds you should plant. No person should be allowed to tell you how, when and where to plant seeds. The Devil should not be allowed to cause you to stumble through a harvest that God never desired for you to have.

The Father said that He would give you the desires of your heart, and way too many people mistakenly think that God is the Candy Man and will give you whatever want. What it does mean, is that God will make your desires match His desires, and because He knows what is best for you, you will be able to have things that you never could have imagined having on your own.

Mary and I were asked back in October 2008, to become the Children’s Ministers at our church. This happened way before we were married, but we knew that the Father was setting us up in ministry. We were not even surprised, because the Lord had already been giving us a vision and direction for where the children’s department needed to go.

I remember asking our pastor… “There are going to be some things that we will want to do that might not make any sense to you, and what I want to know is will you trust us?… When I take this on, I will want to take it all the way in excellence.”

I knew that if we were going to do this, we didn’t want to have to struggle to have the support of our pastor.  I am happy to announce that we have been supported by our pastors.

It is a shame when a church does things to cause their children to be second class citizens. They should be shown that they are important and cared for. Children’s church needs to reflect the excellence of the “adult service” in every way, and the adults should make available every resource to their kids. Resources should include time as well as money, and everything in between.

Our pastors have allowed us to claim a room as our own, even though it is used by adults at times. Adults don’t need to have their own sign up, but the kids appreciate it being there “just for them”. They have given us a top notch lighting, projection and sound system that reflects the quality that the adults have. I am happy with the budget that we have, and we have nothing lacking.

What Mary and I have come to realize is that we need to have thick skins while doing this. Over the last few days we have come across people in the church, who have never once stepped in to help us, but have felt the need to tell us how to do things. We have even had someone tell us how we needed “to plant seeds into our ministry”.

If there is one thing I know, is that when the Holy Spirit puts something on your heart that needs to be done, you do it. You never try to push, manipulate or judge someone into doing what you are called to do. All the while we were seeing what needed to be done in the children’s department, we never went up to the people who were currently dong it and make them do it “our way”. We sat on the vision until the door opened, and the Lord said “Enter In!”

We have to stand our ground and take the direction that we are told to go, and it is the Holy Spirit that tells us to go there. That is simple… right?

Another thing that we have been dealing with is those that do not take what we do seriously. Yes, have fun with it, but do not make a mockery of it. We make rules so that there is order in our service, not because we hate your child. We care enough about every one of our kids that we make sure they have a safe and fun experience. There is nothing worse about being a children’s minister than a parent who thinks “their little angel” is better than all “those other misbehaved kids in that room”.

I mean, come on now… we have ushers in a church to keep the adults from throwing selfish tantrums in their service… Why do you expect that our children don’t need to be ushered out on occasion? It is called “…descent and in order…”

What I love about the kids, is that they haven’t learned to hold on to petty grudges like the adults do.

Back to seeds…

Mary and I have been planting a lot of seeds into the ministry that God has given us. From hours of building and decorating the sanctuary, months of lesson planning, writing books, and even the newest… a Plinko Board

We cannot allow petty distractions to get us off course.

No, it might not make sense to you, nor seem as important to you as a clean floor, but it isn’t for you. You might not think it is important, but the kids sure do.

Yes we walk in love, above all we walk in love. We want the kids to grow up knowing Jesus, and we love them. We will do this until the Father moves us…

Thank you Father God for the ministry that you have set us up in. Thank you for paving the way, and blessing us. Help us to stay the course and walk the walk of love. Thank you for favor and help that works with the vision.

After much travail, I have finally delivered my new baby!!!

Well, in fair respects to those ladies out there who have actually given birth, this is nowhere near that.

I have worked on this book for a season, and edited it for another. I spent many hours on concept and design. Many thanks go out to Ryan Simmons for his cartoon resources at Cartoon Solutions.

It felt good to be able to send it off to the printers, but after all that, it feels even better to hold my baby in my arms.

My 3rd book is finally in!!!

In GZ Kids (my Children’s Church Group), we have been learning about the Gifts of The Spirit.

Like most thing about Faith, we adults tend to over complicate that which God has made simple. I found myself trudging through the lessons, and fighting Satan’s distractions. As I ended the quarter, it became apparent that I needed to get something into the hands of the kids that would boil down man’s fluff, and leave the simplistic truth of the gifts that the Father in Heaven bestows upon us.

What the Holy Spirit directed me to do was write a teaching book on the subject, and deliver it in a comic book format.

The Lord opened every door, and finally the tangible copies are here!!!

Thank You Jesus, for another vision fulfilled in my life…