Angels In Voice

We are so happy to report tonight that both dad and I received GOOD results.  Our dad went for his bladder scope test early yesterday morning and there were no signs of any new tumors in his bladder.  Praise The Lord!! We are very thankful he is doing so well.  We shared the the wonderful news with our family and friends about dad.  While praying that I too would receive good results.  Our family woke up bright and early at 5am this morning to head down to the Mayo clinic in Scottsdale.  I had labs scheduled at 7:55am and my CT scan was scheduled for 9am.  I couldn't eat anything after 7pm last night because the early labs were fasting labs.  I did well and didn't get extremely hungry.  Crystal waited to eat and we snacked on some Life cereal dry after the CT scan was done so that I could get my morning medication down.  I am not sure if any of you have had a CT scan with/without IV contrast.  I never look forward to it when they inject the contrast into the IV.  It isn't the warm sensation you feel all over your body that gets me, its the burning of the IV vein as the contrast is being put in that really makes me cringe.  That to me is the worse part of the test.  I just kept praying and asking "God to help me through it."  After we left the Mayo clinic in Scottsdale we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up a few items we needed and then we went to "In-N-Out Burger" for lunch.  We treat ourselves to "IN-N-Out" once in a while because they have the best hamburgers.  After we had lunch we headed to Ross to shop around and kill a little more time before heading to the Mayo clinic in Phoenix for my 1pm lab appointment.  I had some more labs drawn only this time they were non fasting labs. You can imagine what my poor right arm looks like from all the sticks I received today.  After the labs we had to wait another two hours for my 3pm follow up appointment with Dr. Mulligan.  It was nice because I checked in early for all my appointments and so they were able to work me in earlier.  Still it was a really long and tiring day.  It was well worth the wait when I saw the smile on Dr. Mulligans face as he walked in the room and shared the good news about my Ct Scan.  He told Crystal, mom and I that he reviewed my Ct Scan with a radiologist and that the tumor I had embolized last November is now scar tissue.  So that was encouraging!!  The chemoembolization did its job for sure.  He also said they didn't find any new tumors anywhere in my lungs or liver.  We are just so thankful and are Praising God for this great news.  We enjoyed the beautiful rainy weather for the majority of the day, it was just gorgeous.  This afternoon the sun came out as we were heading home from the clinic.  It became very warm out, and we were in the mood to celebrate.  So we all agreed it would be a fun way to celebrate by going to Wendy's and getting a frosty for the ride home. Very Yummy and refreshing too!!!  Our hearts are happy tonight knowing that the Lord still has a plan for our lives.  He is not finished with the two of us.  We feel strongly that He has so much more in store for our family and our ministry.  Dr Mulligan also explained that if the next three month follow up shows nothing.  That I can then go every four and half months for a year.  If things continue to go well from that point on I will then be able to go every six months and if all continues to go well then I will go once a year.  We were really encouraged by that and we are praying for the Lord's healing in my body along with dads.  We commit our lives to fully serving him.  He is our only hope through both good and the bad times.  So I just wanted to update you all and thank you for your continued prayers for our family.  We greatly appreciate it.  We are all very tired tonight and both mom and I didn't sleep well.  Mom had problems with her acid reflux making her feel nauseated the whole night, so she is very exhausted tonight.   Since I am allergic to the IV contrast I had to prep with prednisone steroids for the CT scan.  I had to take one 50mg tablet a few hours before bedtime and then another one during the night.  So I was feeling wide awake and anxious in bed last night.  So we are all praying for a good nights sleep tonight.  We love you and we would like to leave you with the lyrics to the song "Jesus,"  and the Music Videos you can watch, click on this link.

http://www.stanlucas.com/angelsinvoice/broadband/Jesus.wmv

For the sunlight on my face
For giving me another day, oh, to breathe
For sending down the rain
To remind me of the ways I need You
There are no words to say thank You
For all You've done

Jesus
Son of God who walked the earth
To feel my pain and give me worth
I praise You
Jesus
Holy One who took my sin
Who shed His blood and rose again
I love You
Jesus

For Your mercy in my life
When I deserve to die
You took my place
For cleansing every part
Of the places in my heart
Where there was shame
There are no words to say thank You
For all You've done

Jesus
Son of God who walked the earth
To feel my pain and give me worth
I praise You
Jesus
Holy One who took my sin
Who shed His blood and rose again
I love You
Jesus
Jesus

One day I'll look into your eyes
And I will behold You
The moment I've waited for all my life
When I finally embrace You
My Jesus

Ohhhh…

Jesus
Son of god who walked the earth
To feel my pain and give me worth
I praise You
Jesus
Holy One who took my sin
Who shed His blood and rose again
I love You

Jesus
Son of God who walked the earth
To feel our pain and give us worth
We praise You
Jesus
Holy One who took our sin
Who shed His blood and rose again
We love You
Jesus
Jesus

WOW!!  This week has flown by really quick.  I can't believe it's the end of July already.  Where does the time go?  I was having difficulty breathing all last weekend and on Monday and Tuesday as well, but thankfully it's seems to be much better.  I am not quite sure what it was.  I was thinking that I may have had some chest congestion because every time I would sneeze my lungs would open and that made it easier to breathe.  I don't know for sure, but I am feeling much better.  It's been so humid here the past few days that we both have been feeling a little more tired.  We didn't get up until after 9:30 this morning, I didn't want to get out of bed because my head was throbbing.  I have been having more sinus headaches the past three days.  I am hoping we will get some rain so that it will clean out the air a little bit.  

Candice and I had a pretty busy week.  We met with a friend of ours on Tuesday for lunch at El Paso Bar-be-que.  His name is David Singer and he owns a Christian newspaper here in the valley. We met David at a Born-again Jewish church back in October of 2002 where we were invited to sing.  He has written a couple of articles on our ministry.  We hadn't seen him for a couple of years so it was nice seeing him again and catching up.  On Wednesday evening we went to the American Idol concert at the Jobbing.com Arena.  Our good friend JoAnne Weber had tickets and invited us to go.  It was so much fun!!  We are big American Idol fans and have watched the show for many seasons.  So it was awesome seeing them perform live.  We brought our dad's birnoculars and it was neat because you could see every little detail on their clothes and shoes.  Jordin Sparks, who won AI this year is from Glendale, AZ.  She is only 17 years old, and her voice is amazing.  Blake and Melinda were also our favorites.  Blake is an entertainer for sure, he was so enjoyable to watch.  Melinda's voice is gorgeous and beautiful.  She was a backup vocalist for CeCe Winans.  Actually, she is on CeCe Winans's "Throne Room" CD singing backup. She is too good to be singing backup.  Her voice is incredible!!  Overall, the concert was very enjoyable and a whole lot of fun.  I am glad we had the opportunity to go.

Candice and I went out to dinner at the Islands with our dear friend Marie last night.  We met Marie when we were attending Glendale Community College a few years ago.  We have gown closer over the past couple of years and she is very special to us.  She is getting married next January and she wanted us to meet her fiance Matt.  We truly enjoyed our time with them.  Matt is a wonderful guy and Marie is so sweet.  We are so thankful the Lord has brought her into our lives.  We are so blessed by her friendship. 

 Please keep our family in prayer.  Our dad and Candice are going this week for their three month follow up tests.  Our dad has his bladder scope scheduled for this Monday and Candice goes to the Mayo clinic on Tuesday for labs, a CT scan and she is scheduled to see Dr Mulligan in the afternoon.  We are praying they will both be clear. They are both doing very well, so we are expecting that the news will be good.  If all goes well it'll be another three months we wont have to worry about anything. Thank you so much!!

We arrived home from Tuba City yesterday afternoon around 4:30pm.  We were all pretty exhausted after a busy weekend of traveling.  Saturday morning we all got up, got around and our dad loaded up the van.  We left for our four hour trip.  It was a long way up there. Our friends Larry and Lora Root traveled to Tuba City also.  On the way we stopped at a Indian Trading post to look around.  We decided there was nothing there that we couldn't live without.  So on to Tuba City we went.  We were surprised to see such desolation, no greenery of any kind.  We did find the strange mountains attractive.  Tuba City is on the Navajo Indian Reservation.  We thought it was pretty neat that we Eastern Indians had the opportunity to minister to American Indians.  We stayed the night in the parsonage that was on the church grounds.  Crystal had started having lung tightness and pain in her chest on Friday, it continued through Saturday.  We decided it would be best to take a couple of small oxygen tanks with us.  She had been using her rescue Albuterol inhaler periodically.  After we unloaded our things and settled in the home for a bit.  We headed off to KFC for dinner.  We came back to the house and Larry and Lora came over to visit.  They stayed at a motel near the church.  It was a blessing to have them with us.  They have invested so much time into our ministry.  We feel so honored that they care so much about us to travel all that way to be there in support.  We really do appreciate all you guys do for us.  Thank you for being so wonderful! That evening our Dad, Larry along with our brother Jody went to set up our sound at the church.  Lora drove us over to do our sound check.  It took a while because the building was hard to EQ.  We were grateful that the church arranged it for us to do our sound check on Saturday night rather than Sunday morning.  When we got back to the house Crystal was having trouble breathing.  She used the oxygen and it helped a little.  We were concerned about her breathing and pain, because we had planned to do nine songs.  She woke up Sunday feeling the same, but we had prayed about it Saturday night and were leaving it in Gods hands.  The people were so kind and welcoming.  There were 150 people there and we felt God's presence.  We sang four songs and gave our testimony.  We both struggled vocally through the first four songs.  Then our mom told our story and about our health issues while our dad went out with us in the church lobby and we used oxygen.  Our mom did an awesome job speaking.  She says she gets nervous speaking in front of a crowd, but she has a willing heart and the Lord is using her greatly. The oxygen helped me tremendously and Crystal some, but she still struggled with pain and breathing issues.  God is so good. We were able to sing the last five songs all in a row with no breaks.  We are so humbled that the Lord can use us to spread the good news to others.  We thank you First Baptist Church of Tuba City for allowing us to come and minister.  Thank you all for your prayers.  May the Lord continue to use us to lead many more souls to him. 

We are packing today to go to Tuba City.  We are leaving at nine tomorrow morning and it's about a four hour drive.  Please pray for traveling mercies as we drive up there.  Please pray for the two of us as we minister on Sunday morning.  We will be bringing the message through song to a congregation of Navajo Indians.  We are excited about it and pray we will be a blessing to them.   The altitude in Tuba City is approximately 6.000 ft so we are concerned that we may have difficulty breathing.  We planned nine songs to sing, but not knowing how we may feel will depend on whether we do all nine songs.  We are leaving it in the Lord's hands, knowing that he will meet our need.  He is in full control at all times.  Thank you all so much for your prayers. 

WOW!! I can't believe it's July already!!  We hope you all had a wonderful and safe 4th of July.  We had a nice 4th of July.  Yesterday morning we got together with Paul Nunez and Chuck Kinslow to find a song we can do together as quartet for church.  Paul is the choir director at our church.  He sang at our benefit concert in March and has a beautiful voice.  Crystal and I sang "i've Just Seen Jesus" with Chuck a couple weeks before Easter Sunday.  Chuck has also been a part of a couple of our benefit concerts.  The three of our voices blend very well together, so we thought it would be fun for the four of us to get together and work on a song.  Their voices are more of a classical style and Crystal and I just love that richness about their voices.  They told us they really enjoy singing with others because it gives them an opportunity to sing in harmony.  Our very first voice teacher taught us to sing in harmony when we were thirteen years old.  We have loved singing in two-part harmony ever since, we feel it adds so much to a song.  It'll be fun to sing with Paul and Chuck and sing in four-part harmony. 

Our associate Pastor Daniel Dennis and his wife Julie invited our family over for a get together yesterday evening.  They live out in Goodyear which is about 15 minutes away from us. They invited a few other people from our church along with some of their neighbors.  We had a nice dinner and a great time of fellowship.  It was 117 degrees out yesterday.  Way too hot to sit outside and wait for the fireworks to start, so we stayed inside.  At nine o'clock we went outside and stood in the front yard to watch the fireworks.  We had a great view of three different firework shows.  We could see Goodyear's, Litchfield Park's and we believe the other one was coming from Surprise.  It was really nice. It worked out great for us because we didn't have to fight the traffic or the big crowds of people. 

On Monday we had an appointment with our Pulmonologist Dr. Radford.  We still see a Pediatric Pulmonologist whom we've been seeing for the past eleven years.  She will be retiring soon and so we will have to find an adult Pulmonary specialist, which we are not looking forward to.  Dr. Radford is so wonderful and so caring.  You just don't find many doctors who will take the time to sit and listen to you.  She is very patient, and understands our needs.  So it'll be sad to lose her.  Our appointment went well but I did get a little bit of discouraging news.  My PFT's ( Pulmonary Function Test) are down to 59% and Crystal's are stable at 67%.  My last visit was in June of 06 and my PFT's were stable at 66%.  So that is a bit disappointing.  Dr Radford mentioned to me that it could be a combination of things, like the lung surgery I had back in November as well as the chemoembolization treatment too.  She said it was encouraging to see my weight up again.  I am feeling relatively healthy and I'm exercising three to four times a week.  As well as performing.  So those are good things I'm most definitely thankful for.  So with my PFT's being questionable at this point, I am asking that you keep me in your prayers.  I know many of you pray for us continuously and we greatly appreciate it.  It is easy to get discouraged about things like this.  I know the Lord is in control and HE is always faithful.  He has brought us this far and I know he will continue to carry us the rest of the way. I go for my follow up lab work and Cat Scan at the Mayo clinic on July 24th.  Our dad goes for his bladder scope on July 23rd.  So we are praying for good results and another three months that we don't have to worry about medical issues.  Thanks and God Bless!!