Hi everyone. You know the drill: pick which file format you want (Microsoft Word or PDF) and click the link to download your copy of our February prayer letter. Thank you all for your interest, prayers and support. Blessings to you all!
One thing I (Dave) did on vacation in December was catch up on reading and research that I don’t always have time to do during the rest of the year. This time around I investigated a number of aspects of the book of Revelation. In order to share my findings, I created a blog called Giffmex’s Blog of Apoca-lists. You can see it by clicking on the image below. No, it’s not filled with end-times speculation, but lists and resources to help understand the book of Revelation. We hope you find it helpful and we hope you take time to post comments and questions there.
Hello everyone,
Just wanted to fill everyone in on Blanca’s breast surgery. She had her surgery yesterday, Thursday Dec. 3, and it went well.
Blanca had discovered a cyst in her right breast, and when she had it checked out, the tests found a cluster of spots on her left breast, too.
The cyst was benign and they removed it. The spots did turn out to be cancer, but in the earliest stages, so that section was removed, too. The lymph nodes showed no infection whatsoever, which was a good sign. They removed one for testing, which is standard procedure.
Blanca was sitting up, talking and eating when I left. She said the worst part was the biopsy in the morning, in which she almost fainted from the pain. They had put a local anesthetic, but Blanca tends to be impervious to sleep pills, local anesthetic, etc, so it hadn’t taken full effect when they did the biopsy.
The doctor said she won’t know whether Blanca will need radiation treatment until the last test results are ready around Tuesday. Please pray she will not need this painful treatment, once a day for 25 days.
In addition to the successful surgery and the lack of infected lymph nodes, we are grateful to the many people who have been praying and helping us. We know that many, many people were praying in Mexico and the States, several people from church here have agreed to help with watching the kids and watching Blanca for a couple times when I need to leave, and my mother is coming on Sunday to help for about 10 days. God bless them all.
I came home to get the kids in bed last night, get them off to school this morning, but am headed out very soon to pick her up. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement,
Dave Gifford
Update, 12-10: Blanca will need follow-up radiation treatment for 5 weeks soon after Christmas, giving her body time to heal. However, we are grateful for three things regarding radiation treatment:
We also ask your prayers for us as we look at the possibility of a visit from Blanca’s mom (in Miami) and three nieces from Honduras, who all hope to visit us, possibly in January or February. This will be the first time that anyone from Blanca’s family has visited us here, so we are excited about that. However, the radiation treatments would limit our possibilities with them, so we need discernment as to the best way to proceed.
Hi everyone!
Here are the links to our November/December prayer letter, which includes a “Fridge banner” – a page to print out and stick on your refrigerator. The Fridge banner has our photos, our 2010 general prayer needs, and a ticket to clip and send in a support gift.
Word version: http://www.giffmex.org/docs/dec09plfridge.doc
PDF version: http://www.giffmex.org/pdfs/dec09plfridge.pdf
You may also enjoy this post about something funny that happened to me (Dave) on a recent conference trip: http://www.giffmex.org/newsblog/?p=183
Thank you to all of you who pray for us, support us with financial gifts to World Missions, and write us to encourage us. Blessings to you all in Christ,
Dave and Blanca Gifford
On October 31 I was in Altamira, Tamaulias to give conferences and preach. I stayed with a nice couple, Javier and Alma, and their two children. I knew from experience that the Christians from Altamira are very hospitable, so it did not surprise me when I saw them move into their kids’ room so that I could have the master bedroom. The previous 24 hours had been exhausting, involving little sleep and little food, so I quickly got to bed.
I woke up at 6:15 after a night of uninterrupted sleep, feeling refreshed, but needing to go pee. One hitch: the only bathroom was accessible only
Has this ever happened to you?
On Friday I needed to take the bus to Altamira, Tamaulipas from Mexico City. I tried several times to call the taxi place in the afternoon to arrange for a taxi to pick me up at 8:30. No one answered. So plan B was easy: Blanca would drop me off at a major street where I would hail a cab. » Continue reading “Terminally insane”
A year ago I came up with a program called No-Brainer Notes. It had a few weaknesses, but it was the closest I had ever come to creating the perfect note-taking program with TiddlyWiki, which I have been using and fiddling with since 2006.
Now, almost a year later, something prompted me this week to try my hand at improving it. The result is exciting – the original idea I had last year is finally a reality. It leaves last year’s version in the dust. So I will be retiring No-Brainer Notes to the dustbin, because here comes NoteStorm!
NoteStorm
NoteStorm, like No-Brainer Notes, is a note-taking application that you use from a web browser but you use it offline, from your computer. The difference is that automatically indexes your topics, subtopics and notes as you add them. No more pasting codes or refreshing your browser needed. And NBN’s ugly arrows have been replaced by a pretty treeview menu. I am so pleased I even made a slideshow tutorial for it, even though it hardly needs one!
It works best in the Firefox web browser, though it also works in Google Chrome and Opera for the Mac. It will also work in Internet Explorer, but only with some prior tweaking. (Now is a good a time as any for you to switch from IE to a better browser if you haven’t already!).
Check NoteStorm out here and see what I am so excited about.
Sorry this one is so late! Here are links to our prayer letter in both Word and pdf formats. Needless to say, this blog has much more information that you can’t get in our quarterly prayer letters, so please take some time to explore the prayer requests and blog posts here.
Thank you for your visit! Blessings to you! Dave and Blanca
This was a crazy but blessed Sunday (August 30, 2009) at Gethsemani church in Xochimilco! The church is between pastors, so soon-to-be pastor and seminary graduate Odón Paredes asked me to help the church celebrate its 16th anniversary with preaching, baptisms and professions of faith. I suggested the Lord’s Supper as well, so that those making profession of faith could participate for the first time.
The celebration was rendered bittersweet by the passing of Evangelina. Evangelina was a relative to many people from church
and only recently had accepted Christ. She had died that morning. A number of church members had to miss the anniversary service of their » Continue reading “Workouts!”
Blanca organized and supervised VBS at Gethsemani church in Xochimilco from August 3-7. VBS began the day after the Houston team left, so it was a busy two weeks for this church. Over 120 kids came to VBS, and learned about the love of Jesus. There was even an inflatable pool the last day, and most everyone got wet! Check out the entire Flickr photo set here
