FINALLY got my computer back on line!  Spent hours last night installing programs.  Still haven’t finished.  Wasn’t able to get on the blog.

Yesterday Ashley and I had a great time.  We went over to the Gwinnett Detention Center to get the rest of Jesse’s stuff.  In particular we wanted to get the Life Application Bible that I sent him.  There were a LOT of letters!  THANKS to all of you who sent him a greeting!.

We also went by Stone Mill Church which is where my brother Tito Ruiz is the Pastor.  I purchased a new djembe for his worship team and took it over for them to use this weekend.  Hope they like it!

Then over to the Mall of Georgia.  We spent most of our time at the Apple store.  Ash had a problem with her Mac with the Windows side of the programs.  We had to go to Best Buy to purchase the Office Suite and reinstall that as well as the Vista operating system.  All those disks were lost in the fire.  Bahd luck.  Took about an hour and a half to get everything running again, but now she’s her usual high speed self!

We’re still upgrading her clothes to a more mature, professional look.  She’ll be starting Georgia State University in the fall, as well as making presentations to churches for Whirlwind so it’s a good investment for her.  Our supporters have been SO generous to us!  We really appreciate the outpouring of financial help for our family!

The bad news for me was that the two programs that I had almost completely edited for the Palmers were NOT on the backup.  I still can’t figure that out at all.  I’m really careful with stuff like that especially with projects that take a long time to complete.  Pure spiritual warfare.  I was really bummed out by having to redo everything, but that’s just the way it is sometimes.  I spent hours reinstalling all the editing software and got the initial bed of the video laid.  This morning I got up early and started laying in the cover video.  I made good progress, but unfortunately they really needed the project this weekend.  I sent them the only thing I had which was the DVD I created for Cathy Palmer and Terry Earl.  It least it was better than nothing.  It really frustrated me.  I NEVER miss deadlines.  But sometimes, things are just out of your control.  You just have to take a deep breath and do the best you can with what you have.

I had a great talk with Jesse’s psychiatrist this morning.  He feels like Jesse has made great progress and that we can take him out of the hospital Saturday after one more family session!  Terrific!  He was in the hospital for six days, which is about the average for most patients.  He’ll be going back for outpatient care every week to make sure that his medications are working well or if they need to be adjusted.  The brain is a very powerful and delicate instrument.  It takes time to fine tune.  The doctor is very optimistic about his recovery.  Apparently, if treated properly, the recovery rate is over 90%.  Please keep praying for that!!

Kathy and I had a fun afternoon.  We rode our bikes from Avondale to Midtown Atlanta!  That’s over 18 miles!  It was great fun.  Atlanta has a system of bike trails that go from Midtown all the way to Stone Mountain!  That’s about 20 miles one way.  It’s like a triple wide sidewalk that has a dashed line in the middle.  It was really a lot of fun.  I took a bunch of pictures.

Another of the programs I had to reinstall was Photoshop Elements.  I use that to compress the pictures before I upload them to our Photo Gallery hosted by Smugmug.  I’ll add pictures to the blog when I get that online!

Thanks for all your prayers for our family and for Jesse in particular.  God is still in the miracle working business!