Darren LeBlanc

I posted the gallery HERE.

If you have a few minutes, click through each image and read the captions. I told much of the story of the trip just through the words written under each picture. I will , however, blog about the trip…hopefully this week.

Today is a day for mourning.

Joel passed away just a few minutes ago. Thanks for those of you who have prayed for him over the last couple years. Please pray for Ryan and Lyss and they deal with the final step in losing their father (he has been in the hospital for quite some time). I’m broken for them.

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UPDATE: Service details

All services will be held at:
First Assembly of God Church
220 Sycamore Ave, Shrewsbury NJ 07702
732-741-0048

Directions:
http://www.shrewsburyag.com/directions.html

Viewing
Monday, June 29
2pm - 4pm & 7pm - 9pm

Funeral
Tuesday, June 30
11am (interment to follow)

So I’m home. Got home yesterday actually, but did nothing other than hang out with Olivia and go to bed. Tonight I’m a little more up to staying up to chat with all of you. It’s 8am in Zimbabwe, so I am getting a bit tired, but I decided to grab a couple pictures as a preview. I spent 90% of my time behind the video camera so I didn’t get as many pictures as I’d have liked. I only took about 2000 :)

Here is the star of our show, her name is Neatness:

Here is her home:

And here is the chapel that is part of her school (which by the way, is one of the best schools in the country):

I sorted the rest of the pictures and I’m down to about 300. I’ll get them up soon and tell you all about it.

I am back in the city for a few hours….and tucked away at Paul’s Pest Control again. I don’t have long to write but I have to mention Neatness. She is 14 years old, and we spent three days getting to know her and filming her life. I can’t wait to tell you all about this brave young girl who cares for her family in the midst of the devastating effects of AIDS. Waking up and spending time in her village at 4:45am when she wakes and makes a fire…and feeds her siblings…and takes them to school….well, it was definitely one of the best experiences I’ve had.

We are heading off today so I’m not around for long. Hopefully, we will be “tweeting” from Ryan’s phone.    check it outL  http://twitter.com/forgottenvoices

hey - i only have about a minute here. I’m tucked away in an office at Paul’s Pest Control, in downtown Bulawayo. Thanks to the owner for letting me use his internet for a couple minutes.

Things are going really well. Today we are meeting with some young people that Forgotten Voices has supported for years. I’m really excited to speak with them and get to know them. Hoping that we get some great footage as well…so we can help tell the world the great stuff that Ryan’s organization is doing here. Ok, see the link below for ryans twitter - his phone is the only one that works here so we will keep updating that.

God bless…I’ll check in again soon.

Gate B27 is clearly marked a few feet above my head. JFK isn’t all that crowded right now, but there is a jack hammer probably 100 ft behind me. For some reason though, its not bothering me :) The walls in this terminal are basically all glass, but its not so great today because the fog is as thick as I’ve seen since the San Francisco Bay. I’m here plenty early…perhaps too early. But when there is only one flight a week where you want to go, its better to be safe than in NJ all week.

I have had a significant amount of inquiries this week on what my mysterious trip to Africa is all about. So I guess it’s time to chat. A dear friend of mine Ryan Keith (you may remember him from a random video in a Cambridge MA restaurant, which randomly enough is managed by another dear friend of mine…but that’s another story)

Ryan is president of Forgotten Voices International. A undying passion for the kids is central to the organizations purpose. Specifically, kids in Zimbabwe and Zambia who have lost their parents to AIDS. Ryan and I were dreaming together a couple months back and before long we decided I’d be joining him in his next quarterly visit.

My role here is pretty well defined. I am wearing two hats this week.

Firstly, I’m shooting all the video footage for a short documentary/promo film on Forgotten Voices and what they do. We want to capture the story of a young girl whose life is radically different because of this organization. Her story and the story of those who are impacted by her, says all we need to say.

Secondly, I’m putting my Anthem of Hope hat to support these guys. Ryan deals with myriad kids that are orphaned from disease. What does this say to them about God? How do they grow up in a modern age with a commonly “paternal” image of God, when their parents fell to a devastating sickness. You can see how this is close to my heart. I know that in many ways I have to answer these questions for my own daughter. I’m really lucky to have years to wrestle with these on my own before Olivia is old enough to take our conversations there. But this isn’t about Olivia. It’s about the countless young faces that don’t know their parents past the point of toddler-hood. The children who sleep 12 to a room with a grandparent and have to fight for whatever education they do get. I have no preconceived notions of lightning striking and obliterating the hurt and pain these kids face. But, I do believe this trip will be a starting point for some change there…in the kids Forgotten Voices touches already. I’m humbled to walk with Ryan this week and dream about how to better serve the kids.

Ok, Ryan and Steve (video editor) just got here. I’m glad they are on time. Ryan is striking up a conversation with a nice older lady from Zimbabwe who will apparently be on our flight. I’m going to go get in on this. Not sure about connectivity when I leave this airport. If anything, I’ll probably use twitter when I get a bit of internet connectivity on my phone. Scroll down the right hand column to see my twitter updates. Ok, I’m out. have a great week.

By the way, I’m not sure how good our internet connection will be, so if you want to follow what is going on, its best to keep tabs on my twitter. You can scroll down on the right hand column of this page, or just visit HERE - If I have network connectivity, I’ll send pictures to the utterli box as well. We might even get a blog or two :)

PS. Colleen gets the purple heart for waking up way before the crack (of dawn) to drive me up here.

• June 8, 1981 was the day Misty was born.
• June 8, 2003 was the day I married Misty. 

And on June 8, a few years before we got married, I gave Misty a song I wrote for her. It’s on the old Reign Storm album, Deeper (our last release). I wanted to share it with you. It’s not really our best work ever…but some of you might enjoy listening to it as we remember our lovely “beautiful girl”, on her birthday.

>> Download: Beautiful Girl

If you have sat through a church service in which I was doing the music (what many Christians call “worship”), you have likely heard something by Jeff Deyo. He has been someone I have looked up to in the worship arena for half a dozen years now. I saw Jeff and his great band this past week down at Calvary Lighthouse in Lakewood. I just wanted to share some of the pictures with you. Click the picture below for the full gallery:

I usually travel a lot in the summer. For years now, there always seems to be frequent trips I need to take for work in the May through July time frame. Last year wasn’t that busy though. I think part of it was just that I wasn’t fully “up to my game”.  I was focusing so much on trying to cure cancer (literally and figuratively) that I probably wasn’t employee of the year material - a recognition I garnered the year before. Regardless, as of May 1st, my calendar was uncannily light. But before long I get a call that there is an important meeting in FL and I need to be there. I don’t usually “get calls” about traveling. Mostly, I make my schedule based on what we need to accomplish and how the team is doing across the country. But this time…it wasn’t my idea.

Misty wasn’t doing perfectly, but traveling for work is part of my job and frankly she and I were both talking like she was going to be healed and we should live life normally. She was still basically doing everything on her own, but we were starting to be a little more desperate in our hopes for a cure. The unending barrage of bad news was getting to us.

For a few weeks prior to that point, we had been bombarded with emails and calls telling us to watch this Lakeland Revival on tv…so we did. It was a huge gathering led by Todd Bentley and focused very clearly on healing. There were wild claims of people being healed left and right. He had someone on the phone one night that swore he was in the hospital room with a man that just came back to life, that very minute. We weren’t sure what to make of it, but at that point…we were open to whatever. In talking with our friends Timm and Meg Ziegler, it turned out that they had been discussing the same Revival and deliberating about whether or not to ask us to go. Two or three spiritual leaders in their lives had recommended it to them so we it came up that we both at thought about it, we entertained it. I was already going…so we decided to go as a group.

It was almost as if the stars collided on this one; I get a random call to be in FL requiring me to fly in on Sunday night (Sunday was Mothers Day), so that’s the night we planned to go to the service. Well, after we bought our tickets we heard Bentley announce that Sunday night was going to be dedicated to praying for mothers…and for people with terminal cancer. He prophesied that greater miracles then we had seen yet, would happen on Sunday night.

Sunday morning came and it was time to head out. Everything was normal. We were up early and on our way to the Ziegler’s. We carpooled down to Atlantic City from their house (the flights were notably cheaper there). But from about 10 minutes after we got in their car…things were not normal anymore. Misty sat close, right next to me in the backseat of their jeep. I could feel her hands tighten on my arm…something was wrong. I tried to talk with her but in a matter of moments I could notice her speech was getting worse. She managed to tell me that her right eye started going out; her vision faded in and out. It was only a handful of minutes later when she began telling me that her right ear started to go in and out. When we got there Misty needed more help than ever to get out of the car but she walked…even though not for long. Luckily, Timm had expected long lines and waiting, so he brought a wheelchair so she’d be comfortable. The  night before I had told him that I didn’t think we needed it…but clearly I was wrong. I’m still glad he didn’t listen to me.

Now…I began to be terrified by this situation. For so long, I had been trusting our doctors to manage the symptoms and to respond to the emergencies we experienced regularly. But now, I’m taking Misty and, against all likely medical guidance, getting on a plane headed for Florida. She is literally deteriorating before our very eyes and I find myself with the decision to either turn around and go back to the comfort of our doctors (with what was going on, I’d have called the doctor right away and taken her in) or get in a plane where there will be no doctors and no real emergency medical team of the caliber she would need. This had my stomach in knots like it had never been…and has not ever been to this day. I sat there next to her, now in the wheelchair, and I was terrified. I felt like we were in a sick dream. I was almost convinced that she was going to die on that plane if we chose to push on. I prayed. Timm and Megan waited up by security as I sat with Misty. I wasn’t sure I was getting any answer from God. I recall noting that he certainly seems quiet sometimes.

It came down to reason. The doctors here were great at making her comfortable and treating what they could, but she still had cancer and was still moving closer to death by that unconquerable disease. We had to try right? In the Bible, people came from all over to be touched by Jesus (and were healed!) and if Jesus were really showing up down there, well, we had to take that step…in faith. But to be honest, I’m almost surprised with the decision I made that day. It adds up on paper nicely, but when I was there…it wasn’t so easy.

Orlando was hot, but bearable. You could definitely feel Florida though coming off the plane onto the Jetway. The airport though, would soon prove to be one of the most intriguing pieces of this story. Outside we found our rental car, nothing extravagant, but it did the job. All settled, we headed for the exit. We stopped at the booth just before the exit and the woman check our paperwork. I turned to Misty in the passenger seat and noted how friendly this woman was. It was unusual enough for a friendly person like myself to note it. She gets my drivers license and lifts her eye briskly. You really couldn’t miss her eyes. I’m not making this up a bit to describe them as piercing. I recall finding them equally unusual to her demeanor. “New Jersey, huh?” She says with a somewhat familiar, but inquisitive tone. “I am from New Jersey”. “Really?” I respond. She then proceeds to tell us that she is from Lakewood and that she used to go to a church there called Calvary Lighthouse. Are you kidding me? Is this some weird joke? Timm and I were both on staff at Calvary Lighthouse at that time (him full-time, me part-time). We responded with fairly “Holy Cow”-like interjections and looked at each other a bit taken aback. But she continued to almost ramble about other topics as if she were my ADD ridden self in 6th grade homeroom. When the papers were done she did something that is burned into my mind like a branding iron’s mark on a bull. The booth was slightly higher than the car so she leaned her head down in an almost awkward position to get a direct view of Misty, who by the way, looked basically normal. You couldn’t in any way tell she had sever brain cancer unless she tried to talk…which she didn’t. Anyway, the woman’s voice changed, from bubbly and quick with occasional high pitched laughs, to smooth, deliberate and gentle…though clearly exhorting. She looks Misty in the eye and raises her finger to point across my chest towards Misty. “And you” she said. “You trust God. Whatever comes…life or death…you just trust God”. Then with one quick sweep she is back up and her voice is back up as well: “Ok, you guys have a great time whatever you are down here for. And oh, wait, did you need a GPS? Oh, ok sorry, hah hah, ok. Have a great one now! See y’all later!”

Coming Soon - Part 3: Misty’s National Television Debut

Did you miss Part 1? Read it HERE