Mitakuye Oyasin

Our last week on the Reservation was nearly two weeks ago now, and Amy and I have since traveled back across the country and have landed back in Connecticut for a few weeks. Our last week in Eagle Butte was a very bittersweet one for us because we were excited to see our family and friends again, but we were also really saddened to leave our new family and friends... I mentioned in one of our earlier posts that we were honored to have been invited to participate in a number of sweat lodge ceremonies with Jerry and other members of the Tribe. At the end of every ceremony, as each person leaves the sweat lodge, they say "mitakuye oyasin", which means "We are all family" in the Lakota language and greet each other with a hug or handshake. In the six weeks that Amy and I were on the Reservation, we were taken in and treated as 'part of the family' by so many of the people that we met and we really felt a loss as our time to leave finally arrived.

During our last few days there, we were able to finish up replacing the windows in Marcella's home and get her home tightened up for the (out there) quickly approaching winter. We were also able to work on the home of another elderly woman (Charlie Anne) whose entire bathroom floor had rotted out due to water entering through the roof of her trailer. Amy and I didn't have enough time to finish work on her home before we left, but we have heard from Jerry that her bathroom has been completed since we left!

We also continued to hang out with our "adopted" kids from next door and a couple of days before we left, we threw a little pancake breakfast for them (and their dogs...). It was a really special time for Amy and I because we had really grown to love these kids....and for Roxie (the dog in the upper right hand corner of the picture) because she cleaned a couple of pancakes off of one of the kid's plates when she had her back turned!

And then there are the people that we became the closest to... Jerry and Rita, who completely took us into their family while we were there, invited us into their home, talked with us for hours, made meals for us and ate with us and became a true brother and sister to us. I know without a doubt that the friendships made out there will last for our lifetime.

The day after we left the Rez, Amy and I were in our now familiar stations heading towards home when we received an email from Jerry. At the conclusion of his email, he wrote "please read 1st John 3: 17 and 18" and then concluded by saying "Mitakuye Oyasin - Bless you both". Being the Bible scholars that we aren't, Amy grabbed our Bible from the compartment overhead and read this verse: "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need and has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love in words or in tongue, but with actions and in truth". We nearly wept as we rode along in silence for a few minutes collecting our thoughts from the past month and a half, seeing what we had seen and knowing what we now know.

Some of you had commented on our blog in the past and had asked what you could do. Here it is... There are 40 homes of elderly people on the Reservation that are in dire need of repair... much like what Amy and I did while we were out there... Fixing roofs, replacing windows and doors, replacing insulation, replacing siding - Really just making the homes more comfortable and liveable. The majority of these homes belong to widows who are living on as little as $350.00 per month. In the winter months, the energy bills to heat the trailers can consume most of that money, leaving almost nothing for the rest of their daily needs. Each trailer can be renovated for $2,500.00 each, which is an amazingly low figure when you think about it. Because we have been so moved and touched by what we have seen out there, Amy and I have set a personal goal to try and raise $100,000 which would fix every elederly person's home on the Reservation over a period of 4 years. That is only $25,000 per year which when you think about it in the grand scheme of things is not that much money which can make a HUGE difference in the lives of these elderly people who so desparately need help.

This past Sunday, we were at our home church talking to a few of our friends after the service about some of our experiences, and as we were talking, one of our friends reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a few dollars and said, "I'm living on Social Security and it's the end of the month, so I only have a few dollars left, but I want you to have this to start your fund. These are the first few seeds that I know you will water and will multiply when you tell your story". I was dumbfounded as I realized that I had just witnessed a real-life, modern day "widow's mite" story. Amy said to her, "I pray that God blesses you 100 fold for what you just gave", to which she replied, "I hope so too, because I'd give that right back to you"... Speechless... 1st John 3: 17 and 18 in practice...

I know this has been a long entry and hopefully you have stuck with it this far. If you are at all inclined to help us meet our goal, you can send a donation directly to Jerry at:

Okiciyapi Tipi Habitat for Humanity

PO Box 670

Eagle Butte, SD 57625

If you are sending a check, please put "Elderly Housing Renovation" on the check, and if it isn't too much trouble, please send us an email letting us know that you sent the check so we can sort of see where we are in our goal. Our email address is: ameliaanddavid@yahoo.com

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support over the past few months and thank you in advance for your generosity to our brothers and sisters on the Cheyenne River Reservation. Mitakuye Oyasin... We are all brothers and sisters...

Love to you all, Dave and Amy

It made a difference to that one...

Over the course of the time since Amy and I left Connecticut to start our mission trip, a number of people that we have run across have said the same thing to us... "Why are you bothering to do this? The two of you aren't going to even begin to change anything..." I think these thoughts were part of what made our previous week kind of rough because we started to buy into them a little bit and we started to get discouraged when we became more aware of the extent of the need here on the Reservation. Before we ever started our trip, we heard a story about a couple of people who were walking on an ocean beach. A big storm had just passed and thousands of starfish had washed ashore as a result of the rough surf. As they walked, one of the people would occasionally reach down, pick up a starfish and toss it back into the water. After this had gone on for a while, the other person said, "Why are you bothering to do that? There are thousands of starfish washed in? What difference do you think you are going to make"? The other person reached down, picked up another one, tossed it back into the water and said, "It made a difference to that one". God is so good, because Amy and I were reminded of this story as Mary was thanking us for the work we had done to her home... It made a difference to that one...

So Amy and I were able to finish up Mary's home and start on the home of an 89 year old Lakota woman named Marcella who needed to have her windows replaced because the ones that she had couldn't be opened any more and they were leaking so much cold air in the winter that she needed to cover them with plastic. Marcella is an amazing woman who served in World War 2 as a combat nurse in Normandy on D-Day and the period of time that followed. She was decorated for her valor and service by both the US Government and the French Government. When she returned to the States, she went on to serve as the head of the nursing program on the Reservation. As we started talking with Marcella, we soon discovered that she is also an amazing quilter! Many of her quilts are on display in museums around the country. We were blessed enough to watch her creating the quilt above which is a part of a quilt that she was making for the Quilting Hall of Fame! We were also really excited because Brenda, (in the picture above) one of the volunteers that we met down in New Orleans is attending college in Nebraska and came to volunteer with us for a few days on the Reservation before she went to school! It was really great to see her and catch up with her again.

In our first entry after we made it to Eagle Butte, we mentioned that our RV is parked next to the Habitat volunteer house and at the entrance to the neighborhood that Jimmy Carter helped to build back in 1993. Living next door to us is a family with 5 children that we have sort of "adopted". These kids (and all of their puppies) have become a big part of our life out here and we have been able to spend a lot of time with them after our work day is done. Coloring is one of their favorite things to do, so we have been doing that with them quite a bit.

So Amy and I sincerely wanted to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers over the past few weeks. We could really feel them and can't express how much we appreciate them. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Love to you all!

~Dave and Amy

Dances With... Buffalo?

It has been a couple of weeks since we were able to update the blog, so this will be probably be another long one with a bunch of pictures... So last week, we were able to finish replacing the windows, siding and skirting on the Jones' family home. In the short time that we have been here, it has become more and more clear to us how important Jerry's "Renovating the Rez" program is for so many of the residents here... and while the work done on a home may not completely bring it up to standards, it may mean the difference between making it through the winter or not... or being able to buy food instead of fuel.

We have been working the last few weeks with volunteer groups from all around the country, but we have worked mostly with Habitat's two summer interns, Francesca and Amanda. Francesca is 18 years old and from Chicago and has been on the Reservation since the beginning of May and Amanda is 20 years old and from Wyoming and came to the Reservation about the same time that Amy and I did. Both of them had their last day this past week since they had to go back to school and we were sorry to see them go... We had a lot of fun working with them and hanging out with them after hours and were really encouraged by their willingness to give their time and love to the Lakota people. We will definitely be missing them alot as Amy and I will be the only volunteers with Habitat for the next three weeks.

This past week, the four of us worked at the home of Mary who is a 68 year old widow living in Eagle Butte. Her husband passed away in 2005 after being sick for many years, and she has been living by herself with her dog, Ginger since that time. Mary's home has the same problems that many of the homes on the Reservation have... leaky roofs, gaps in the siding that let water in, rotting floors and doors or windows that in some cases won't even close. While we weren't able to replace the siding and windows like we did on the Jones' home, we were able to seal her roof to stop the leaks that had been coming in for years, cut out and replace the floors that had rotted out in the living room, bedrooms and kitchen, replace her carpet and vinyl tile in her kitchen and hallways, cut in a new door in the back of her home and replace a bunch of weatherstripping that had fallen off. This past Friday as we were cleaning up at the end of the day, Mary was walking around looking at what had been done over the course of the week and said to her dog, "Look Ginger... we got a new home"! What a difference such a little bit of work can make to someone who can't do it for themselves... That's probably one of the biggest lessons that we will take away from our experiences on the road... that you can make a huge difference by doing something small for someone... by investing a little bit of your time into someone else's life. Amy and I call it "being Jesus with skin on"... taking the time out of your own schedule to help someone and love on them, to listen to their story and tell them why you are doing what you are doing.

This past week, Amy was also able to write and submit a grant working in conjunction with another local non-profit for a community playground that would be placed in the middle of a 50 home neighborhood here in Eagle Butte. If the grant is awarded, it would make a huge difference to the community, as there are over 350 children in this one neighborhood alone that has no playground and no place for the children to go. She is also pursuing other grants to help get tools for Jerry and the Habitat chapter here on the Reservation as they are severely lacking in tools that would help them continue their work.

While we have been on the Reservation, we have been trying to immerse ourselves into the culture as much as possible and we have been fortunate enough to participate in Sweat Lodge cermonies and have been to a Pow Wow and Rodeo along with visiting many of the sites that are sacred to the Lakota. We also had the chance last week to literally go out into the middle of a herd of Buffalo on Jerry's 30,000 acre ranch...(no - that's not a typo...) which was really amazing. I am posting a video below of a portion of the herd, but really wanted to show you some of the beauty that is out here as well.

As we mentioned earlier, Amy and I are going to be the only volunteers for the rest of our time here. This leads me to ask for two things from all of you. First, if you have any time in the next three weeks or anytime after that, please consider coming out to the Reservation to help out. They are in desparate need of volunteers to work on the hundreds of homes that are in need of repair. We received one comment after the last blog update wondering where donations could be sent to be most effective and get directly to the Lakota people. Amy and I are looking into that and will let you know in a future update. The second is that we would ask that you keep us in your prayers for strength and protection. This past week was a tough one for us, but we know that God is bigger than anything that can get thrown at us. We are very grateful for the prayers that have been poured out on our behalf over the past week and we have felt covered particularly over the past few days, so thank you and please continue to pray for us if we happen to cross your mind. Love to you all!

Dave and Amy

Welcome to Eagle Butte, SD

(Just a note before I get into this week's entry... Since there is no internet connection at the Reservation, we are only able to update the blog if we leave the Reservation on the weekend, so our updates may not be as frequent as they have been in the past, but we will do our best to update it as often as possible. Since a lot has happened since our last post, this will probably be a fairly long entry and I will be putting up a number of pictures as well...)

After an eventful week of travel which included yet another blowout with the same set of tires, Amy and I arrived in Eagle Butte, SD safe and sound and ready to start volunteering with the Okiciyapi Tipi branch of Habitat for Humanity on the Cheyenne River Reservation. God really showed his awesomeness yet again allowing us to travel over 60 miles on a single back tire (verrry slowly) from a very deserted area in Minnesota to our destination for the night! So we are now parked and living at the entrance to the Habitat for Humanity neighborhood that was built by Jimmy Carter back in the 1980's and are in front of the house where the other volunteers are housed. The head of the Habitat chapter here on the Reservation is Jerry Farlee who is full blooded Lakota and has lived on the Reservation along with his family for his entire life. Jerry is an amazing guy who has spent much of his life doing everything that he can to improve the life of the Lakota people. He is also a spiritual leader in the Tribe and performs sweat lodge cermonies on his ranch for members of the community and for the volunteers as well.

Before we left in July, Amy and I had done some research on the demographics of the Reservation, and we knew that statistically, this was one of the poorest areas in our country, but we were actually not prepared for the reality of what those statistics would look like in real life.

Our first few minutes in town and before we ever made it to where we are now parked, we met Jerry at the site that he was working on. The home that was being refurbished for a family (which was replacing their old trailer) was a FEMA trailer from New Orleans that was shipped up to the Reservation after a family down there was done with it and had moved back into their home. We were blessed to be able to meet and talk with the new owners, CJ and Robin and their two children, Kailahni and Austin who were going to be moving into their new home this past weekend. We also got to meet Robin's mother and sister and some other members of the family as they excitedly followed the progress of the work.

An offshoot of the work that Jerry is doing on the Reservation is called "Renovating the Rez", which was started to try and make some of the homes more energy efficient and comfortable in the winter and summer by replacing roofs, windows, doors and siding. In talking with Jerry, some of the Lakota people are living on $350.00 per month, and in the winter particularly, can spend $300 of that money per month just heating their home. So the second home we have been working on is in the neighborhood shown in the pictures here, which is a pretty typical neighborhood from what we have been able to see so far. We are replacing the windows, doors, and siding, and are installing metal skirting around the bottom of the trailer to stop the wind and snow from cooling the underside of the trailer in the winter and to help with cooling in the summer. The home owners have already told us that they can feel a difference in the home with the work that has been done!

The need here is tremendous. It is hard to imagine that this level of poverty exists in our own country. Along with the renovations, Amy has been working on some grants to try to bring in some funding to help with these projects. We will probably also be putting a plea into one of our future entries because it is remarkably inexpensive to make an enormous difference to one of the families out here. We are very honored that we have felt so welcomed into this community and look forward to building relationships with the people we meet. I ask that this week, you would keep the Lakota people in your prayers because the need is so great out here. We also wouldn't mind if you would keep the two of us in your prayers as well and will do our best to update the blog as regularly as possible. By the way, Okiciyapi Tipi means "People helping people build houses" in the Lakota language! Love you all...

Dave and Amy

Amazing Grace...

It has already been a month since Amy and I left New Orleans, and we have spent the time restocking, recharging and reconnecting with friends and family back home in Connecticut before we head out for the next chapter later this week. Before we move on though, I felt like we needed to wrap up our time in New Orleans because I hadn't really done that. I think there were three things that God really impressed on our hearts while we were down there ... well - actually there were a whole lot more, but I'd run out of space if I put them all down and you would definitely go back to playing TEXTWIST before you got halfway through reading them...so here's the condensed list... The first is that God has an appointment book for each of us, and it doesn't always match the appointment book that we have for ourselves. Amy and I couldn't figure out why our trip was delayed by 3 months prior to going to New Orleans, but that was revealed to us shortly after we started working at Eddie's house. Amy had a conversation with Eddie in which he was telling us about how many roadblocks he had run into while he was trying to put his house back together... dishonest contractors who took his money and left without finishing the work, shoddy workmanship of the ones that did their work, fighting with government and insurance agencies to try and get the settlements that he was entitled to, people who broke into his home and stole his tools and materials while he was trying to complete his home.... Amy looked at Eddie and said "This is ridiculous! What has gone right for you"?? Eddie looked at her and said "You and your man are here... That's what went right. God had an appointment for us at this time and if you had come any earlier, I wouldn't have been ready for you". ... Message received... God's time, not ours... God's appointment book, not ours...

The second thing was a work that God had to do in our hearts... a bit of refining by fire, so to speak, that was learned through the little things that we encountered along the way. It wasn't that God needed our construction abilities... What we came to realize is that what was truly important wasn't the tile that we laid or the baseboard that we put down or the hot water that we hooked up, although those things certainly were important so that Eddie and his wife could move back into their home. What was truly important was the relationships that were formed during our time there... the fellowship and prayer and kinship that we were able to share with Eddie and the people of New Orleans for a short time while we were there, yet leaving with a bond that will last for our lifetime... Eddie calling Amy his daughter and me his son, telling us that we have a place to live with them if we ever need it, giving us the keys to his house on the last day that we were together... They are still on my key ring and probably will be as long as I can carry keys around in my pocket. Love God, love people...

The last thing is how amazing our God is and how abundant and amazing His grace is. We saw grace evidenced all around us... in the eyes of a man who has lost everything, but when he thought no one was looking was seen walking around his house as it was getting put back together saying, "Thank you Jesus.... THANK you Jesus... Thank you Jesus..." We saw grace in the volunteers that we worked with, some of them with so many needs of their own, who were still down there rebuilding homes as if it was for the Lord himself. We saw grace in a city that embraced Amy and I with its collective arms and accepted and poured into us the entire time we were there.... and of course, we found grace in the risen Savior who poured out his life for Amy and I and Eddie and Robert and the people of New Orleans and the people of the world... a grace that was shown to us by the very people that we went to serve.

On our last night in New Orleans, we stopped by to see Eddie and his wife before we left because we wanted to see them one last time. After we had visited for a little while, we moved out to the car to say our goodbye's. Eddie caught sight of my guitar that I had thrown on the back seat of the car and asked if I played, to which I replied yes, and so we pulled it out, and on the sidewalks of the 8th Ward at 10:30 at night, Eddie, his wife, Amy and I sang ... Amazing Grace... and we prayed together and cried a little, but moreso rejoiced at the appointment that God had made for all of us and what HE had accomplished in our time there. Our God is an awesome God...

So we have been back in CT for a few weeks now and added a window and door into Amy's parent's kitchen to raise a little money for the trip and help them out a little, and we took a sidetrip up to Bar Harbor, ME for our birthdays (which was very grey and rainy, but very relaxing and still beautiful). And now, we're getting ready to leave for our next stop which is going to be on the (Lakota) Cheyenne River Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota where we will be working with Habitat for Humanity to replace windows, doors, and roofs to help some of the residents tighten up their homes for the (as I understand it) severe winters that they endure. Much of the housing on the Reservation is in great need of repair and there are little to no resources to have the work done. So once again, Amy and I ask for your thoughts and prayers as we head out to South Dakota. Please pray for safety, wisdom, and mechanical reliability for the RV! If you feel the desire, please send us a text message or an email. We truly do treasure messages from home. We will be updating our Facebook accounts on the way out to let everybody know where we are and that we are in safe for the night and will update the blog once we have settled in on the Reservation. Love you all...

Dave and Amy

Topsy Turvy

So being from New England and being Memorial Day and all, Amy and I found ourselves with the sudden urge to plant a garden, even though summer has been in full swing down here for weeks now. As we were wandering through the aisles of the Dollar Store, we came across the "Topsy Turvy" and couldn't resist. The deal with the Topsy Turvy, if you haven't seen the info-mercial three dozen times by now, is that you plant your tomatoes upside down and they grow as hanging plants rather than the normal way. I must admit that I never realized that tomato plants could grow upside down and I oddly am a bit intrigued by it... Anyway - so the day after we plant our topsy turvey garden, the owner of the home we have been working on, Eddie, gets a visit from FEMA and they inform him that they will be taking his trailer from him on June 1st, regardless of whether or not his home is ready to move into. If you have read our previous posts, Mr. King is 76, diabetic, has a broken rib and has been taken advantage of by just about every contractor that has worked for him to get back into his home. Any of you who are on Facebook saw our pleas to write to your Congressmen and Congresswomen to ask FEMA to extend the deadline to take back the trailers, because many of the people down here are just now getting settlements from the government of from their insurance companies. Many still haven't even received them yet, so a HUGE thank you to all of you who wrote on Eddie's behalf and on behalf of the people of New Orleans. Anything that you can do helps the people down here who have truly had their lives turned upside down - topsy turvy - for the past 4 years. Amy and I have been working down here as well to see if we can get his deadline extended through local channels, and hopefully we will be able to buy him a couple of weeks until his home is ready to be moved into.
In the meantime, God has been providing just the right people at just the right time to take Eddie's home just about to the point where he and his wife will be able to move in. Rich, the gentleman that we wrote about a number of weeks ago, came back and worked with us for a day during this past week, even though he was volunteering with a different organization this time that he was in town. Today, we were able to move to the upstairs of his home and start the cleanout and move-in, so the whole house is really starting to take shape. The downstairs is basically finished except for finishing a few cabinets in the kitchen and hooking up the gas for his kitchen stove. The upstairs has less work to do since he only had 2 feet of water... in the upstairs of his home... so most of the work is cleanup, painting and some plumbing and electrical issues. We had a crew from Missouri join us today and we were blessed with - wait for it... an electrician and a plumber! Just the right people at just the right time. We are praying that by Friday, we will be able to move Eddie and his wife in - just in time for us to leave on Saturday morning and just incase FEMA decides to take his trailer on Monday. Eddie's wife was in the house looking around this morning and for the first time said, "This is really starting to look like home again!" What a heartwarming thing to hear... We are finding it so hard to believe that our time here is already up and we are beginning to grieve the fact that we will be leaving. I have a feeling we will be back...
After work and on the weekends, we have been doing our best to take in the city while we have been here. Last night, we found ourselves listening to Eddie play with his band in Preservation Hall which is in the French Quarter and one of the most storied jazz halls in the city. It is about the size of our old living room and has been graced by the biggest names in jazz music for years and years. Amy and I were in the Standing Room Only section, which really means that we were about the 20th person in the door, but the people were lined up on the street for a full block waiting for a chance to get in. On Saturday, we went down to St. Martinsville which is in the heart of Cajun country and is the site where the Acadians were sent when they were exiled from Canada back in the 1800's. It is such an interesting part of the country and the people and their stories are really amazing. Last weekend, we went to see the Natchez, which is an old paddleboat that takes you up and down the Mississippi River, and the video below is part of the trip that you can see from shore... pretty cool.
So as we are into our last week here, thank you SO much for your support, prayers, thoughts, messages, calls, texts and everything that you have done to help us begin our journey. You will never know how much it has meant to us.... and please keep it up! Next week will be a travel week for us and then we begin Chapter 2! Love to you all!
~Amy and Dave

"There Are No Levees On The Other Side"

Last Sunday, Amy and I felt led to worship at a congregation in the neighborhood that we have been working in, so we went to worship at the Franklin Street Baptist Church in the 8th Ward, right around the corner from Eddie's home. They were flooded with upwards of 10 feet of water which destroyed much of the church building. As the majority of its members were displaced to other cities due to the storm, rather than disband as so many of the churches have done, this congregation decided that its ministry and outreach would continue, so they started worshipping in a temporary facility in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Houston, which is where most of their members were relocated to immediately after the storm. They also simulcast their services on the internet so that all of their members could still worship wherever they had moved. It wasn't until April of 2008 that the renovations were completed and the building was reopended in New Orleans. Today, there are nearly 4000 people that worship every Sunday, and last Sunday, we were blessed to be two of them.

The worship experience was awesome! It was a Southern Baptist service complete with a huge choir, dynamic preacher, and Wurlitzer organ to back up the pastor as he spoke. As we went on through the service, there were two things that really started to stand out that definitely left an impression on us. The first was the simplicity of the worship. There were no hymnals or songbooks. There weren't even words on the overhead screen. The entire group of believers were singing songs from their heart with hands in the air that they either knew by heart, or occasionaly, someone would call out the words, but it was worship like we have never experienced before. The Pastor gave a great sermon on Gods' Grace, and it was during his message that the second thing really started to stand out... the difference in the physical and spiritual needs of the people of New Orleans. The service started with the Pastor saying "Are you happy that the Lord put breath in your lungs this morning"? "Do you feel blessed that the Lord woke you up today?" Not a word about the economy or the job market or the Swine Flu... Simply, are you happy that you are alive and breathing today? As he was wrapping up his sermon, the pastor started talking about the "other side". He said, "On the other side, there will be no hurricanes" (which was met with a chorus of Amen's) ... "On the other side, there will be no levees (which was met with another chorus of Amen's) ... "On the other side there will be no FEMA trailers"... The needs down here are so immediate... so basic... We stood there with our mouths open (literally) and exchanged a glance with each other and experienced a faith in God that we hadn't experienced before. Not a faith of excess or comfort, but a faith of true trust for provision and daily necessities... a faith of life and death that they had all been experiencing since August of 2005. It was humbling and I truly thank God that we were allowed to be a part of it.

We had a great week at Eddie's home. There were no other volunteers in camp at the beginning of the week, but Amy and I were able to put up a bunch of baseboard, do some painting, hang some cabinets in the bathrooms. On Friday, we were joined by Skyler, a 22 year old from Nebraska and we were able to clean piles of debris from the outside of the house and mow the lawn for the first time in years. Inside and out, his house is starting to look like a home! He and his wife are visibly starting to get excited and are starting to pick out furniture locations rather than picking up lumber and windows from Lowe's.

Now - I realize that was kind of a heavy entry, so just so you don't think that life is all serious and that we aren't having any "fun" down here, take a look at the video clip below. This was part of a Mother's Day song that we wrote. On Friday after work, Amy and I went around to different spots in New Orleans and filmed each of the verses and made a bit of a spectacle of ourselves in the process, but we had a lot of fun doing it. This was verse 4 that was filmed in the middle of Jackson Square which is the heart of the French Quarter. ...and yes... I'm playing the harmonica!

So once again, thanks for all of your prayers and support! Please keep the prayers coming... We really can feel them. We miss all of you more than you can imagine... especially our Mothers this week. Love you all. ~Dave and Amy