Update on David

From Celia: Ventilator is OUT!!! David is doing well breathing on his own. Please continue to pray! He is still vulnerable to infection and needs to regain his swallow reflex. Praise God!!

Please keep praying!

Update on David

Please pray!!!

Father, please heal David Newkirk quickly and completely!

from Judy:

Ed just came in the office to say they are moving David to ICU—they are having to put him on a respirator. His respiration is very shallow!

Pray! Pray! Pray!

Thanks for passing this on to others.

Buzzing Prayers for David

Father, please heal David Newkirk quickly and completely…

David Newkirk has a condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. He is very sick in a hospital bed in Pasadena. He asked that his Christian brothers and sisters pray for him with the above prayer.

Read more at: http://www.thetippingpointsblog.com/2009/11/prayer-for-david/

Our good friend and Brother Mark McCune sent an idea that they did for a friend of DTS when he was sick. They gave him a prayer beeper.

David has a standard numeric beeper (pager) with him and what we are asking you to do is every time you pray for him, send a page. This will let David know that his brothers and sisters around the world are lifting him up to our Father and will be a witness to Him for the people around David when they hear buzzes coming in and ask “why does your beeper go off so often?”.

What a huge and wonderful thing!

The pager is numeric only, so just send your prayer location. Here are the instructions:

Every time you pray for David let him know where you are in the world, send him a page with the following numbers:

Country Code – (USA=01, UK=44, India=91, etc.)
Area/District Code – (626=Glendora/Pasadena, 909=San Dimas, etc.)

If I happen to be in San Dimas – my prayer location would be 01909 (USA, San Dimas).

Here are the pager details:

To send via telephone or cell phone:

Dial his pager number: +1 (626) 231-4107
Wait for beeps….

Enter your prayer location: (eg: 01909) then #
Wait for beeps….

Hang up.

To send via website:

Web Site Address: http://www.usamobility.com/send_a_message/index.asp

When asked for pager number, put in: 6262314107
click “continue”

Put your prayer location in the “Numeric Message”
click “send”

Air Travel

This has to be the most frustrating time in history to use air travel.

I just returned from a one-day meeting in Charlotte, NC. 

Ten years ago, I would have been able to get a reasonable, direct flight from Ontario to Charlotte without much trouble.  Not so today. 

On the way there, I took US Air (which, by the way is my new favorite airline – the employees actually try to understand your frustration with the whole nightmare of the TSA required processes and the constant of the “unknown”) from Ontario to Phoenix.  We landed in 119+ degree weather.   Of course, the flight from Phoenix to Charlotte was over booked and, due to the heat, the plane had significant weight (balance) restrictions.  Another 45 minutes of people running around trying to figure out how many children there were that were not ticketed (children that small don’t weigh much do they?) and we were finally off. After spending an extra $15 for an aisle seat and $7 for a pathetic salad for lunch, the dreaded announcement comes on informing us that “due to weather conditions in Charlotte, we have been diverted to Greenville to refuel”.  Well, this turned into a 2 hour detour.

The way back was not much better.  I had to go through Denver this time and switch to United from Denver to Ontario.  Which, of coarse was delayed.

Another surprise to me was the sheer number of people traveling in this “down” economy.  The flights were all full (full = zero open seats) and the airports were more crowded than I’ve ever seen them.

Oh, and then when I landed back in Ontario I quickly figured out  that United is in a completely different terminal than US Air (the one I departed on).  So, 1/4 mile walk to the “correct” parking lot after almost halving a heart attack that my car was stolen…

I’m really disappointed in that it looks like I’ll be back to being a “road warrior” again…  Need to quickly rack up those mile to get some status on these airlines!

I don’t know what the solution is, but WE NEED ONE. 

Maybe when Obama is done socializing medicine, he can look at this and just kill it… Then, the next administration can start over from scratch!

Serving the Casa De Dios in Tecate

The COD High School Group went on our annual short-term missions trip this past week and I was able to join them.  Every year we assist them in serving the children in Tecate through a Vacation Bible School (VBS) program.

This is the Team!!!

Personally, it was an amazing time serving the little children who are of ultimate importance to our Lord Jesus Christ.

We went down after church service on Sunday July 5th.  After we unloaded the luggage and assigned changing rooms for the “girls” and “boys”, we got our tarp out and made preparations for our first night (on the ground) in Tecate.  We had our beds where we worshiped and watched puppet shows, so we had to completely setup bedding at night and pick up in the AM.  Here is what we all looked like waking up on Monday morning:

The first day we had about 90 kids and by the end of the week, there were over 120! 

They came from many different local colonies around the church.  Some walked, some parents brought them, and some were picked up by two of our vans that drove to some that were too far to walk.  We all became familiar to them after the first couple of days and everyone had a great time and learned about God’s Word.

We brought a few of the Evangi-Cubes with us which the kids were fascinated with.  The fascination was a great lead in to talk to them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This was difficult for me who completely forgot all my “conversational” Spanish that I picked up when I was High School age.  I committed that I would learn before next year – so, I have a goal for this year to learn!

 

Many of the kids accepted Christ as their Savior from this ministry.  One that I overheard I also captured a photo.  Shawn, one of the parents that came down with us spent time with a child that was visiting Tecate from the States.  Both knew English and after hearing the Gospel, understood it, prayed, and accepted Christ – WHAT A BLESSING TO SEE THIS!

Some of the stories we told were done with puppets – kids just love puppets.  Here are the some of the puppeteers – can you tell which is which? :)

 

 

 

 

God is so good that He gives us fulfilling works to do for the willing – I strongly encourage you too to be willing!   Working with children is hugely rewarding and will teach you to have child-like faith as they do!

Luke 18:16 - "Let these children alone. Don't get between them and me. These children are the kingdom's pride and joy …  Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in."

Times Are Changing…

Wow, it has been over a year since I wrote anything here and much has changed…

To begin the year, the family and I returned from visiting Carrie’s folks in Wisconsin to find out that Sun (my employer at the time) was gearing up for yet another set of layoffs.  This one was going to be bad for us (those of us who came to Sun via the acquisition of SeeBeyond).   Sun decided to defocus on the SOA and Integration technologies that we are all very passionate about.  Meaning that, most of us were being let go. 

To be honest, it was time.  Sun had really defocused us long before they communicated it to us.  Personally, I was heading up the RFID, the B2B, and MDM engineering teams.  We had to cut the RFID technology and most of the team last year and stopped all but a few efforts around the B2B space.   So, needless to say, I was not feeling like I was contributing all that much.

After I learned that I was “effected”, I found out my long time friend and colleague Gevik was also going to be out of a job.  Both Gev and I had always talked about starting our own business.  So, we took the opportunity and started RedSeal Solutions.  We worked hard trying to make it for four long and very fun months.  However, with the economy in the state that it is in and the pending Oracle acquisition of Sun this summer, we had a hard start!

We decided to hit the “pause” button on that and start the painful search for a full-time  job.  Wow, what a hard market.  I haven’t had to cold-interview for over 20 years and had forgotten how painful it is to have to talk about yourself!  Anyway, this is ongoing now and I have a lot of friends helping (and praying for) me!

So, now we’re up to today.  Being out of work puts a huge amount of stress on me and subsequently my family.  I am trying to be sensitive to this, but it is making home life stressful.

One of the positives about not having a hard schedule is that I am able to go with the COD High School Team down to Tecate and help mentor them and minister to our friends at a church down there.  I’ll write about this when I return.

Berkman Photography

I finally had some time over the Christmas and New Years holidays to get my hobby to at least look like more of a business - Berkman Photography.

I've always loved photography. I first started back before digital when I was in junior high school where I took my first "darkroom" class. Yes, this was back when you had to actually develop the film :)... I've also done some videography (is that a word?) - a couple of weddings. This video passion started when I got to help a good friend/brother of mine Mark do the 90th anniversary video for our church (C.O.D.).

Anyway, I've gotten mixed advice from friends and family - "you should absolutely start a business around your hobby and passion"... all the way to "no, don't do it - your passion will become your nightmare"... anyway, I took the first one :)...

Have a look around and let me know what you think:

Berkman Photography's web site