A House For My Kids

Here we are…approximately 2 years since the Doctors first told us that Jeffrey was in trouble with the mold Aspergillus. They said some scary things and we prayed…hard!

Got inspired…went looking through old songs that I had written…recorded the CD…set up the web site…danced a little dance with a TV show about building a house…talked with some guys about a piece of property to build on…heard from so many dear people about buying a CD and how God had touched their lives with the songs…jumped through a bunch of hoops about the property in hopes that a certain TV show would indeed arrive for a makeover…got the call that they would not be arriving…got the property in our name…cleared the property…got a survey…got the site plan…engineered footer plan…got set up with Owner/Builder Network to help us build…all of this in the midst of moving, working, and a dozen or so hospital stays. When all of this is done, we’re going on a vacation!
On Friday, we took the site plan and the engineered footer plan to the city to submit it for a building permit. As soon as we get the approval on that…we then go through the approval process for the construction loan. The CD sales have been a miracle that has gotten us to this point, but we are still looking at needing a construction loan to get it done.

Let’s say that the building permit gets approved in the next 2 weeks…
( the city official that is presiding over such things, is on vacation all this next week! ) and then the loan approval takes 30 to 45 days, that puts us the first week or two of October to begin building. I’ve been pushing in every way that I can for 6 months now to begin building. But am reminded daily that it is all in God’s timing.

Please…if you know of any one needing Civil Site work done….Civil Resource Consultants in Nashville, Tn. have been an answer to many prayers. Gary Emerson and David Abbey are ‘Get it done’ kind of people! Please help me spread the word about this awesome organization! Need structural engineering work done? David Cartwright in Mt. Juliet, Tn. is also someone that we could not Thank enough! There are so many people that God has sent our way to help us, that we are working on a way to say Thanks to all of them.

We have turned the A/C off at our house because of the duct work issue that I wrote about in an earlier blog. Waiting on the HVAC man to come and replace the main trunk line. My good friends at a local Home Depot helped us out with a portable A/C unit to put in one of the bed rooms.

Jeffrey turned 9 years old on Friday! The most intense, Joyous, tear filled, hardest working, most rewarding, most miraculous 9 years that Diane and I have ever spent on this planet earth! We don’t bother to remember what life was like before God sent these precious miracles into our lives! Thank You Lord!

The Christian Country Music Association is an awesome organization started by Gene and Brenda Higgins over 12 years ago. My first convention was last November and I met an incredible group of people there. They simply want to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ through Faith based Country Music. I plugged in and released a song from the CD to Christian Country radio in order to spur more sales. ‘What the Lord Gave me to do’ went to #4 on the CC chart in Powersource Magazine and #2 on the Christian Music Weekly chart. Is that incredible?

Well, now they have released the results for the top 10 finalists for The Inspirational Country Music Awards to be aired Live on the Gospel Music Channel Nov. 4th. from Nashville’s Roy Acuff Theater out at Opryland.

Among a few other nominations, our CD ‘The Work of a Carpenter’ has been nominated as
Best New Inspirational Country Music Album of the Year! Some of the other nominees in this category include Alabama and Alan Jackson! This is surely witness to the fact that this little ‘Carpenter’ project is a ‘God Thing’! The work of THE Carpenter!

Please take a look at the prospect of joining the CCMA. We are hoping that this relatively young genre will continue to grow!

Thank You again for checking on us here! It is a real blessing when one of you tells us that you’ve been keeping up with us through this site.

Until next time…May God Richly Bless you and yours! Don’t hesitate to call! 615 668-3908 Also, I am aggressively working on getting more bookings to go out to sing and share our story. If you know of any thing, we would appreciate any new leads.
gregmcdougal@ahouseformykids.com

P.S. Please pray for Mike Chamber’s family. They are going through several struggles right now with cancer and other things. Just lift them up!

Dear Friends,

If you’ve been keeping up with us through this blog, than you know that Sean has had quite a bit of trouble with his right lung. What can happen is that a bacteria can get in and colonize within the thick, sticky mucus that is typical with Cystic Fibrosis. The place on the X-Ray that I had mentioned earlier that we were concerned about, might be giving us more reason to be concerned. We all caught the croopy cough thing this past week…but Sean started not doing well. So we took him to the CF clinic yesterday and they admitted him to administer IV antibiotics. Last night Diane called to say that He had spiked a fever of 102. This is what happened last time that caused him to have surgery. After surgery, they said that if this happens again, then we should look at removal of that section of lung so that it doesn’t generate any more infection. We are hoping and praying that we’re not headed in that direction. So please if you will put the word out to ask people to pray for Sean. That God will take away the infection.

In the mean time, I picked up the site plan yesterday from the engineers. When we get the engineered footer plan ( from a different kind of engineer) then we take that to the city and hopefully get approved for a building permit. Then we get approved for construction loan and then we start building!

I put out a bulletin last night on MySpace saying that we have come to a crucial time with the project. I asked everyone to renew their efforts in spreading the word about helping us to sell more CDs. There is a culvert to build, a building permit to pay for, gravel to buy and utilities to dig a trench for and run up to the building site. All of this will come out of CD sales money, before we get the construction loan. Thank You all so much. Please forgive my boldness. There is no other way I can do this right now.

Thank You for your prayers and for keeping up with us.

God Bless!

gregmcdougal@ahouseformykids.com

615 668-3908