It's hard to believe I have already been back in Oregon for 6 weeks!! It's starting to feel like home and not just a long vacation. Technically, I am still on vacation this week as I don't start my new job until this next Monday! Thank you God for this great new job!!
I will be the "Partnership Specialist" for Portland Rescue Mission (a place a lot like Star of Hope - but smaller - to my Houston friends reading this). There is an emergency services location in downtown Portland, which has a 3-month program for those who may want to do the big next steps towards transforming their life. Then there is a men's 12-month recovery program and a women's 12-month recovery program (children included if they have them). My role will be working with all "partners" which would be volunteers, churches, donors and businesses. I will be officed at the men's facility (as my new boss and a co-worker who works with partnerships) office there. That being said, I will also be spending time at both the other locations interacting with volunteers and such, so it will be a great mix of it all. I'm super excited and will share more as I get my feet wet. Please pray for me as I start this new job as I am super excited, but sad to leave my brother Andy during the day as I have got quite used to spending time with him. I am sure he is excited to have some alone time back, although he will have the pups here to bug him. :-)
Things with Andy are going well. From the looks of his PET scan the cancer hasn't grown and I don't think they saw any new cancer. He will know better once he has his next appointment the day after Thanksgiving. We have been getting to do a bunch of different things with different family members, so that has been fun, but those outings still always really wipe him out and he usually won't admit how bad he feels or physically uncomfortable he is. Some specific things to pray for him along with a complete healing would be that the left side of his chest is so swollen/blotted and makes him very uncomfortable. He's still having digestive issues and really needs to put on some weight. He feels like coughing a lot, but with a diaphragm, it's often a strenuous/painful process and he's been coughing up quite a bit of "gunk". He's a fighter though and I always admire how well he deals with things he faces.
Here is a pic of Andy, his daughter Riley and I yesterday getting ice-cream at a unique and popular place here in Portland called Salt and Straw and then a pic of Andy and Riley at one of the lookouts in Portland. It was a fun day!!
Hope YOU are doing great - thanks for reading and praying!! :-)
