Friday, July 03, 2009

A Big Splash (and several 'little splashes')

Dear Friends & Family,

Just a quick note to let you know what’s been up with us lately.

We’re doing well. We went camping at Ruth Lake from the 17th to the 22nd and had a great time. We’ve been talking about going camping since we got married 4 ½ years ago and we finally did it. We picked Ruth Lake for 2 reasons. The first is that one of my IT clients raved about the fishing there. He lent me his $800 custom fishing pole (plus another rig) and tackle box to take with us. We rented a boat for 3 hours, but all I caught was my line in the prop and it wasn’t
much fun for either of us. I made Lisa steer the boat and then gave her a bad time about how she was doing it…what a Meany! I did finally hike by myself to a wonderful spot below a peregrine nest and caught a single blue gill. That was it! Not even enough to make a good fish taco! The weather didn’t follow the forecast that I pulled up online – instead of 85-90 it got
partly/mostly cloudy and windy. But it wasn’t too bad and we enjoyed ourselves in spite of it.

We also found out that Gina (our puppy dog) loves the water. We discovered this after we heard a big ‘SPLASH!’ while the guy at the marina was explaining the operation of the rental boat. She had miscalculated the jump from one of the other rental boats back to the dock. Lisa did a scruff-of-the-neck rescue maneuver and all was wet…er ‘well’. Later Gina bounded without hesitation into the lake after I tossed a stone in ‘just
to see’.


We drove from the lake to Hayfork and found my cousin Jack still living in the same house as when we lost contact with him about 10 years ago. He’s not doing well. Hi did end up going to truck driving school and did that for a few years, but said he had to quit due to his rotten teeth making him sick all the time. He’s a hermit living on $250 month in a house that been taken over by spiders and dust. He’s given up on life, but something (Someone) is keeping him alive. There’s a church that has 12 Step meetings 2 doors down from his house now and I’m trying to get in touch with them to have them start praying for him.


We had our Celebrate Recovery 6th Anniversary Celebration last Friday which was a huge success. Our little renter, Krystle, and her baby moved out while we were on vacation, but now we have a new Christian and 12-Stepper, Danny, living with us. He’s really a blessing and it’s so fun to see a baby Christian learn to walk! Plus he has lots of skills so he’s been very helpful and loves to serve. Our CR is growing and we’ve got new leaders stepping up which is great, even though except for me they’re all women. Nothing against women, but it seems we still struggle to get the men’s side of things growing. (Don't say anything, but DANNY would make a great leader and has just expressed interest! YAY!)

Since our worship leader stepped down some time ago, I’ve been responsible for that part of
our meetings, which I’ve enjoyed. We found a wonderful front man in Captain Phil Smith of the local Salvation Army camp, but the Lord saw fit to reassign him to Santa Barbara. I’ve been leading some with my adequate guitar and vocal skills and the help of Heidi Daniels and her daughter, Silver (and occasionally their friend Kat) who all have golden vocal chords. I really
enjoyed playing the blues harp with Capt. Phil though, and am praying for God to bring me some new ‘musicians in recovery’ so that I can just be a fill in guy again.

We just became new grandparents! Kristine and Douglas brought Jake Douglas Tansy into the world on June 13th. He’s quite a handsome little chunk (not so little!). We’re also excited about a baby girl that’s working her way into the world through our daughter Corinne and her longtime boyfriend, Jake. She’s due to arrive in mid-November.

I’m doing a new ebay project. Some old friends from Santa Cruz (Lighthouse Christian Fellowship days) got in touch with me about selling all of their stuff from a house that they had to move out of due to the ozone treatment that the fire dept. did after their central vacuum system caught fire. So now my side of the garage is stacked floor to ceiling with about 160 or so boxes of ‘stuff’. I’m getting 60% of the profits and the rest is going to New Life Center (the
recovery program that I graduated from) and Confidence Pregnancy Center.

Besides that, God has been providing work for my IT consulting business without much interference on my part. Just when I start thinking that I need to go drum up some more business, He brings it without my help. I’m grateful. Now I've got my old employer from IT Solutions days, Jody Gaultney, wanting me to come back to work for him, but it would be a full-time gig and I'm not sure I can juggle that and all of the 'Kingdom Stuff' I'm involved in. I'm meeting with him on Monday, July 6th, to talk about it. <-PRAYER REQUEST (clarity, boldness to ask for what I need, willingness with Jody to let me have it, etc.)

My brother Gary was in the neighborhood recently, but I didn’t get to see him as he was busy
coaching a friend in Monterey on selling books on Alibris. He is really anxious to have us come for a visit. I just found out that Cheap Trick will be doing a Sgt. Pepper’s tribute performance in Las Vegas which would be very cool. Maybe we can get out there for that.

That’s it for now. Hope you’re all doing well.

Love,

Wayne & Lisa