Laynes' Line

     Thank you for praying for us and for Gary's cousin's husband, Sammy Birchfield. Sammy came through a very rough weekend, but has come a long way. He was rushed to the hospital where they discovered that he was bleeding out, internally. They finally got the bleeding stopped and gave him 6 units of blood, platelets and other blood products. Add all of that together and you will see he was very close to crossing the line. Today they are putting filters in his veins to keep blood clots from moving through his body. He is able to get up to go to the bathroom now, so he has recovered well from this weekend. Sammy understands that this is a very serious situation and is ready to face it, even though he may not be fully aware how close he came this past weekend. Please continue to pray for him and the family as they look for an assissted nursing facility that can help him through this next step.      I apologize for dropping the communication, but al...

Dear Praying Friends,      Last week, Valentine, that's his real name (Valentín), accepted the Lord after the service. Most of our reaching the deaf comes after the services, not as a result of the invitation. Remember, our invitations are probably the first they have ever seen. Most of the time, they hear the message, and one of us will begin to chat with them after the service. When they show interest, we pull them aside and deal with them privately. He had been around preaching before but had never wanted to make the decision. He is a bubbly, friendly man who is happy he got saved.       At the end of our fiesta yesterday, Pedro was friendly and chatty like old times, but he had missed the last two weeks. He fumbled around in his pockets and I jokingly asked him if he were looking for his cell phone  (a reference to the phone call made about Armando). He said he didn't have a cell phone, but his face turned red and his countenance fe...

     WELL, it has happened! Last night the bad guys established 8-10 blockades throughout the city primarily to show that they could. If you remember an earlier post, the first one tried ended with 10 arrested and the governor stating that they will not allow such things here. Yesterday was the day the governor was to turn in his state of the state address and it was widely published that he was out of town.      All of the attacks started almost precisely at 9 PM. They stopped a tractor-trailer on the way to the airport, moved it across the lanes of traffic and set it on fire. They boarded a city bus as regular passengers and at the given time, forced the driver to stop at gunpoint. They ordered everyone off and then burned the bus. They stopped a car and a taxi and threw a Molotov cocktail at them causing damage, but a neighboring shop quickly quenched the flames. They tried to make another bus stop on the tracks of the metro train, but he refus...