Luke got married to Karlien Courdier last summer in S. Africa. He
leads a musical group there, and will be recording soon so we may all hear what
he's been up to.
Faith, now 16, is attending a charter high-school, W. Columbia Christian Academy.
Jordan is a Sophomore at Texas State in San Marcos, TX. He's on the varsity basketball team (NCAA Div. I), who had to "walk-on" to make the team, competing to beat out 50 other players for the position (point guard). He also just made the Dean's List in Academics!
Ashley also attends Texas State and is studying to be a teacher.
Hollis turns 12 in a week, and is in 6th grade at Iago Jr. High. He would make his Gramma proud, playing "trumpet" in the school band. He also plays soccer and basketball.
Matthew has finished his time with the Army
after 2 tours in Iraq, and is presently living in near Las Vegas, but preparing to move back to Texas near us.
Before addressing events, passed and upcoming in 2010, I must say that, in retrospect, 2009
has been one of the hardest years for us, as Jenny and I have both seen our dear
mothers pass on out of this life to God's eternal life beyond, making heaven
richer, as they said, and earth
poorer.
If you would like to see a tribute to my mother, ""Gramma"
Dorothy Kirschke, click HERE. There is also a "2009 month-by-month "Kirschke Year in Review" with scores of pictures of family and friends by clicking on HERE.
You can see our new
Christmas 2009 Newsletter byclicking HERE.
An interesting note: I sustained an injury to my wrist
the day after my mother passed, which looks to be, after two unsuccessful
surgeries, permanently disabling for my right hand. At least my fingers
work - LOL! We did our mission trip anyway, with me going around Europe
for a month with a broken wrist, on the bad advice of an orthopedic surgeon (who
I found out later was a foot and ankle man, not a wrist specialist), who told me
that I could have the surgery done when I returned home--no problem. Wrong
... big problem. After the surgery failed, he referred me to Baylor
College of Medicine to a true wrist specialist, who proceeded to tell me what
should have been done the first time. Too late! The second surgery
did little to repair the problem.
I guess some of you reading this that are older
and that can relate to some of the medical problems related to "aging," can
agree with me that when we were young we had a feeling of invincibility and
sometimes found it hard to relate to those in physical pain. Now we know.
It's similar to an aging automobile, whose parts begin failing. Only we
can't trade our bodies in for a new model -ha!
Now some recent news first:
January marked my second archaeological trip with the team from Trinity Southwest University to excavate (dig, dig, dig!) at what is believed to be the ancient city of Sodom southeast of Amman in the "plain of the Jordan" (just 10 mi. NE of the Dead Sea). It was an amazing time, and on off days we traveled to cities of the Decapolis, where Jesus sent his disciples preaching, including Gadera, where he cast the demon's in the demon-possessed man into a herd of swine. We stool at the cliff where they fell over to their death, and saw the cave and tombs where the Gadarene man lived! It really made the Bible account come alive! (I'll post a video here or on the blog later.) For more information on the Sodom site, go to www.tallelhamman.com, and you can also see the YouTube video HERE.
While talking about Biblical Archaeological, let me mention that I tooka trip last year to work with Dr.
Scott Stripling (one of our LifeWay elders, who is an archaeologist and
teaches now Wharton Co. Jr. College) in Jerusalem on the Gabay Barkay's Antiquities
Salvage Operation at the Temple Mount. In case you're interested in these kind of things, here
are some links to the project, which will be ongoing for about 5 more years:
Click HERE to see is a general video introduction to Archeology in
Israel.
You can see my own video of Scott and my time
in the Middle East with some of the places we visited on our "day trips" by
going to www.vimeo.com/davidkirschke or by viewing here:
Back to 2009: When we returned home from Europe last summer, our dear
friends, the Testori's (who have a world-wide ministry out of Milan) returned
the favor and visited us, bringing their boys. We had a great time hosting
them at Lake Conroe on our vacation and showing them the Alamo and Riverwalk in
San Antonio. About 2 months ago, another good friend, whose husband
pastors in southern France, visited us a few days on her hold-over as an Air
France stewardess.
I give a report on a couple other events in our
Christmas letter, but suffice it to say for now that the rest of the summer was
the typical getting the kids ready for school in the Fall, and getting ready for
the events of November and December, including deer season -LOL! One of
those events and the most recent is the move of our church, LifeWay, to
Rosenberg (20 minutes away), which is mid-way between Houston and our Training
Center campus location. Everyone is quite pumped and enthusiastic about
it. (You can get details about it at www.lifeway.org and www.lifeway.org/index2.htm)
[NOTE: I'm going to break now, and will upload new material soon ... when I return from a trip to the National Institute for Marriage conference here in Missouri for pastors and spouses. So, please check back soon!]
I
am still trying to finish this
entire website, and hopefully I can before long---rebuilding it from
the "ground floor up." New pictures, new links, new videos,
and some innovative slide shows will keep you entertained as well as
informed with all the new escapades of the Kirschke Family. Pictures will
continue to be uploaded and can be seen by clicking on "Photo Album" in
the left Table of Contents. Another site to view a few family
and travel pictures old and new, some quite amusing is:
Some
links in the contents at left are not active yet, but will be soon - hopefully
(ha)! So ... as you check back from time to time,
you will find more features and items of interest available.
Enjoy your visit, and please come back and visit again soon ... and
drop us a line in the meantime. We would love to hear from
you!
God Bless you, and thanks again for visiting! Check back soon!
David & Jennifer Kirschke & Family
WISE MEN STILL SEEK JESUS
P.S. Have you seen this YouTube video?
STRAIGHTWAY, INC.
The StraightWay Training Center in Hungerford, Texas, located near
Houston, is a residential therapeutic, non-sectarian, Christian-based
drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, founded in 1975. SWTC has been
for over three decades the only program of its type to provide
treatment for whole families, unwed mothers, single parents with
children, and single adult males and females.
HOW DO WE STOP DRUG ABUSE?
StraightWay is also the largest drug prevention program in
the public schools, giving a message of hope to millions of people all
over Texas, as well as in the Midwest and western U.S. The StraightWay Team
has visited almost 5 million young people since their start in
1975.
