Please pray for the o'connors

We met the O'connors right before Amy and I became engaged all the way back in November of 1998. They were a recently married couple who had begun attending our church. Within a short time of our meeting We and the O'connors became the volunteer youth group leaders of our church. For the next 3 years we maintained a close friendship with them as we ran the youth group together and Mike and I were on the deacon board together. Right before Amy Emma, and I went to Turkey in 2000 we asked the O'connors if they would consider agreeing to raise Emma, in the event anything ever happened to us. They readily agreed.

Shortly before Charlie was born in 2001, we moved away from the area where the Oconnors and our church were located. We were all still in the Chicago area but we were now relegated to seeing them on a much less frequent basis. A few years after Charlie was born, the Oconnors gave birth to their son Max. A few years after that we had Lucy.

In 2006, I lost my job of almost 10 years. I quickly got a temporary to permanent job but without insurance benefits. In December of 2006 the O'connors called and said they were coming over to deliver some groceries that our old church had donated to us as part of their benevolence ministry. When they came over they not only had the groceries, enough for our family to live off for well over a month, but they also had 100's of dollars of Christmas presents they had bought out of their own pocket for each of the kids. I mean each kid must have had 5-6 gifts and they gave us a pretty significant gift card for us as well.

We still don't see them very often. We ran into them at Great America in the Summer of 2008 and just caught up with them this past fall at a wedding of two of our former youth group members. We were excited to see on face book recently they were expecting another child.

This is where the prayer request comes in. Cassandra just informed us on a note in face book that she miscarried their son at 15 weeks. God has used this couple in such a mighty way in our lives over the years. We want to do anything we can to minister to them in their great sorrow. Please pray for Mike, Cassandra and Max.

The Day After

Yesterday was the Super Bowl and in what is becoming increasingly usual for us we stayed at home unable to watch the game. We are not one of those families that does not have a television. We have a television, we just can't watch t.v on it. For several reasons we have decided to not have cable in our home. When we moved to our current home we discovered that our ability to get network television was greatly inhibited. Our reception usually contained more snow than the Atlantic coast states received over the weekend. As a result, 3 or 4 years ago we moved the television away from the antenna, and use the t.v only to watch dvd's and videos. We do watch episodic television through hulu and other online sights. I have watched every episode of Chuck without using a television to do so. The problem we have is with television events like award shows and sports programming. I have become perfectly fine listening to sports on the radio. If I really want to watch a good game, I put on a dvd from the 2005 world series. But spectacular events like the Super Bowl are ones that we now forgo. We sometimes go visit family on such an occasion but nothing worked out this year.

I listened to parts of the game on the radio. Amy and I watched some of the commercials on the Internet and we played some games and read a little. It was a nice relaxing way to spend any Sunday evening, even a Super Bowl one.

Next Time: Works for me Wednesday