December 2006
 
Another year has flown by, and now it's time for our annual Christmas newsletter. But before we get to that, take a look at a few photos I took from our front yard, in our Oregon Mountains Photo Album. It's definitely NOT the view we had in Santa Maria! We are really enjoying the winter weather here, but the locals seem to think we're crazy. Now let's move on to Catherine's acrostic summary of the year....
 

M MOVING to Oregon in July was our big surprise this year! Who would have thought? E EVEN the rabbits made it through the 880 miles! We took the long way up Highway 101 to keep them cool. R RELOCATED: God in his good and perfect timing up-rooted us from California to plant us in beautiful Oregon. R REMEMBER: Brian used to make TV shows as a hobby, now he is making them for a living! Brian drove to Albany for an interview at the end of June, he came back to Santa Maria with a job and the keys to a rental house. Four weeks later we were moving. God is so faithful. Y YREKA! The grandparents went through this town to come to Oregon this fall. They came for a week in October: the coast, the aquarium, Salem, the corn maze, the hay ride… what lovely memories. C CATHERINE loves it up here! The berries, the forests, the rivers, the trees changing colors, the smell of the rain, the whistle of the train...it's a lot like the old country...Switzerland. H HOMESCHOOLING: "At least we don’t have to change schools" is what the kids said when they heard that we were moving. We were sad to have to leave our family and friends in Santa Maria but how delighted we were to find a wonderful group of homeschoolers in our new town. R ROAD: "On the road again"...going from one activity to the other: violin, gymnastics, archery, orchestra, Awanas, playday, we are singing this old song every single day of the week. We are very thankful to have so many interesting things to be part of. I INCREDIBLE, the berries, peaches, apples that we have been picking this summer! S SPEED! All through the summer we have been enjoying going on bike rides with Brian's boss and his family. They are such wonderful people and live only 2 minutes away from our house (by bike!). T THANK you, Father God, for all Your blessings! You take such good care of your children! M MARVELOUS, all the doors of opportunities that have opened for our family in Albany. A AIR conditioning: we are blessed to have this luxury in our house; with temperatures reaching 100º F in the summer, we are thankful to stay cool. Fortunately electricity here is only one-third the price of that in California! S "SILENT night, holy night"...May all that Christmas really means -- its peace, its joy, its love -- be yours as when, that Holy Night, the stars first shone above.

Hello! This is Olivia. I turned 5 on December 4. I took a gymnastics and ballet class. I learned to walk on the beam, jump on the trampoline, first, second and third positions. I love ballet. My papa came to film me. (See the video clip in the October section.)     When my grandma and grandpa came to visit us, the most fun part was going in the corn maze to try to find Jeremy who was lost in there! I like Peter my Sunday school teacher. I like doing crafts and making cards for people. Merry Christmas! OLIVIA

 

As you probably already know, we moved to Oregon last summer (even my rabbits rode with us in the car!) We left behind a lot of good friends, but we also met new ones.

One of my friends I met at Awanas told me about a horse camp she was going to go to, in October, and invited me to go with her. I rode a horse named Apollo, he was great. We also got to muck the stalls, bridle and saddle the horses. Well, just about everything but feed them. The camp was at a place called Canyonview Equestrian Center. They even have a Christian Horse College there, so our counselors were the college students.

I am also part of an orchestra, I am the leader of the second violins. Every week we meet together and practice for the performance which will be in January. I am very excited. I really enjoy reading, especially horse books.

Ever since we moved here I make bread almost every morning for my family. I have also been learning how to quilt, I am not taking a class but I have a book that I am learning from. I am excited to go to Santa Maria this Christmas for my grandparents fiftieth anniversary. Well, have a wonderful Christmas, and a good New Year!

JOANNE
 

Hi everybody! I've been having a great year (so far) except for the moving part; I really miss all my friends in California.

I am in gymnastics this year; it is pretty hard, but I like it a lot. I am learning to vault, and doing back pull overs on the bars, and last time, we had to go on the high bar. It was pretty scary, especially that the high bar is eight feet of the ground! We also have to do a lot of push-ups, and v-ups. Then we have to climb the rope; I almost got to the top. The good thing about my gymnastics class is that it's just two minutes away. I get really sore the day after gymnastics, and one time I was so sore, that I couldn't even walk, but now I am getting used to it.

I also like doing archery. I had gotten a bow and some arrows for Christmas from my grandpa (thanks grandpa, you're a brick [see definition 5]) anyway we found this archery place, and I just had my first class there, it was great. My instructor was once part of the USA olympic team, he is a brick too!

And another thing I like doing here is going on the computer for hours at a time! Since I don't have as many friends up here, I spend more time on the computer, writing stories and making stuff in a 3-D modeling program. I also like to read a lot, so we go to the library often.

In August, we went to this place called Blueberry Meadows (and it didn't get the name by accident), there were a lot of blueberries, and we picked ten pounds! We found a place close to our house where we gather peaches; we picked some and made twenty jars of jam. Well I hope all of you have had a great year too! Bye!

JEREMY
 

 
November 2006
 
Did I visit Jerusalem recently? Or is that my twin brother Shlomo? Well, neither. In this photo, I am kneeling down in the warehouse that my office opens in to, with an office cubical partition for a backdrop. I was asked to pose like this for an ad for the tallit I am wearing, in the Elijah List's ElijahRain magazine. It's coming out in the December issue. Every morning at work this shofar is blown, to call those staff members who want to pray together for a while. With some "digital magic" a photo of the old city of Jerusalem was inserted behind me. Hopefully one day I will get back there again for real!

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When I'm not posing for Jewish ads, I am very busy making my own ads: commercials for our Prophetic.TV show. It's really ironic ... me who has hardly watched TV for decades, me who hates commercials ... here I am making commercials for TV! God sure has a sense of humor! Now that I'm working full-time as the sole member of the video production department, I am quite busy preparing our TV shows to be posted on our Web site. I'm really hoping that in the not-too-distant future we will be able to add more personnel and equipment to our video department so that we can raise the quality level of our productions. Click on the video to the left to watch one of my commercials.

Recently I took a hike at Silver Falls State Park, less than an hour away from our house. We are so blessed to have such an awesome piece of God's creation so close to where we live! I took quite a few pictures ... check them out in my Silver Falls Photo Album. It is such a lovely, peaceful place that we have visited the park three times in less than two months. But now with the rainy season settling in, I guess it will be a while before we get another opportunity. Even my photo excursion was cut short by rain, although it was forecast to be sunny that day. But even that doesn't dampen our enjoyment of the Oregon weather.

A couple of weeks ago Joanne went to an English-style (as opposed to Western-style, which is more common here) horseback-riding camp for a weekend. It was at Canyonview Camp, a Christian horse camp near Silver Falls. This was a really great opportunity for her, since she had to leave her English-style horseback-riding lessons behind in Santa Maria; she really enjoyed herself. We hope to have a photo or two posted here in the near future. Come back and visit soon!
 

October 2006
 
It's hard to believe that we've been living in Albany for 3 months now. In one sense, it all happened so fast. But for the most part, we seem so settled and well-adjusted to life here, that it feels like we've been living here for a lot longer. Since the time I first came here for a job interview at the Elijah List at the beginning of June, through moving during July, and getting settled in August and September, we have truly felt "carried" by God ... His grace and favor have been very evident.

"...Yahweh your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place."    Deuteronomy 1:31

As I shared last month, I'm now working full-time (pretty much) in video production at the Elijah List rather than in the IT (computer) department, for which I was originally hired. It's hard to express in words what an answer to prayer and dream come true this is. About three years ago a deep desire to learn video production started stirring in my heart. Since then, I have invested most of my spare time, energy and money into pursuing this dream. I've taken classes at the community college, worked on numerous projects, produced two TV shows, and bought lots of equipment ... all of this not really knowing why, or where it would lead. Because it was only a serious hobby rather than my "profession," I didn't have too much hope that I could ever have a paying job doing video production.

Two years ago the Elijah List had tried to start regular video production, but for various reasons it never took off. Shortly after I started working there, there was a fresh stirring in the leaders to bring this vision to reality. When I started to see where things were heading, I was praying a lot, asking God to open the doors so I could be involved. Although I like working with computers, if I were asked to choose between the two, I would definitely choose video production over IT. Somehow there is just such a passion in my heart of this type of work. Now, as I look back over the past three years, I can clearly see that God was leading me and preparing me for "such a time as this." All what I learned during that time I am now putting to good use in my daily work.

Just yesterday we filmed our 8th TV show in less than 2 months. But before I had a chance to finish editing any of those shows, I had to put together a show from footage shot 2 years ago. It was an interview with Tommy and Jeannie Tenney, regarding the new movie One Night With The King. (I hope you get to see this movie ... I hope that WE get to see it too!) You can watch the interview online at the Prophetic.TV Web site, which I just redesigned last week. I also had to design a case cover and disc label for selling this video at our online store. So you can see that I've been very busy with video production, graphic design, Web site development, desktop publishing, and more. And I'm lovin' it! I feel like I've finally started to enter into part of the destiny the Lord has planned for me. I sure hope it lasts ... it would be very hard to leave video production and go back to full-time computer work. Well, He has brought me this far, so I know that I can trust Him to lead me on the right path for the future.

As you can see from the photo, summer is fading away and autumn is starting to bloom. It's a welcome relief from the fatigue of hot summer weather. People around here think we are crazy, but we are really looking forward to colder and wetter weather as we move towards winter. Just this morning I turned back on the pilot light for our artificial fire place ... it was nice to have a (gas) fire burning there first thing in the morning. You don't get the nice smell and sound of a real fire, but at least we don't have to worry about buying fire wood, and it's nice that the fire appears at the flick of a switch, and then later turns off just as easily.

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September 2006
 
We have been living in Albany for just over 2 months now. Even in such a short time, our life in Santa Maria is becoming more and more of a distant memory. Just yesterday we finally finished arranging things in the garage, and now we can even put a car in. If that's not progress, I don't know what is!

Catherine and the kids have been putting down roots quickly, mainly through the local Christian homeschool support group. They have been making new friends by participating in regular play day get-togethers, group P.E., and other activities and outings. The Albany Vineyard church has been another source of connectedness. The kids have also been taking classes like swimming, gymnastics and dance. Plus Joanne has a wonderful new British violin teacher near Corvallis, about a 15 minute drive away. Just last week Joanne and Jeremy started their 7th year of Awanas, while Olivia is now starting her 2nd year in Sparkies after a last year in Cubbies. She feels very grown up now!

Other activities recently include a downtown farmer's market, picking your own berries and vegetables at outlying farms, an annual hot-air balloon festival at a park close to our house, and hiking amongst waterfalls at a state park about 45 minutes away. Now Autumn is in the air, and we are hoping for a cold and wet winter to revive us from the hot summer.

On the work front, things at the Elijah List are going well...never a dull moment around there! An amazing and unexpected thing happened last week: although I was hired to do computer work, I was moved out of the 2-person IT department, and moved into the new 1-person (me!) video production department. I'm very excited about this change...it's a dream come true! For a few years now I have been spending lots of time, energy and money to develop my video production skills and experience, hoping it would one day lead to paid work.

A number of months ago, a small video studio was built at the Elijah List offices; at the end of August we taped our first 3 half-hour talk-show interviews. We plan to make them available on the Web, on DVD, and hopefully even on satellite TV (more on that in future blogs). For now, you can view some interviews from about 2 years ago...check them out at Prophetic.TV. So I moved out of the large office space I was sharing with 9 other people into the video studio, which is about the same size room as the one I left, but I'm all alone in there, working in the silence and solitude I so enjoy.
 

Our first load is ready to go, but are we? Beating the heat in Redding The house we are now renting Where I work at the Elijah List The rabbits taking a travel break Our first picnic down by the river My dream car: a PT Cruiser

July 2006
 
The last month and a half has been a real whirlwind of activity and change. There's so much to tell, but I'll try to summarize the main points.

On June 4th I took a trip up to Albany, Oregon, which turned out to be only 825 miles instead of the 840 I had previously estimated (see the May blog entry). The Elijah List wanted me to come up for an interview. I decided to stay a whole week and spend some time checking out the Elijah List and Albany. I spent the week working some at the Elijah List and the rest of the time looking around the area for housing.

To make a long story short, by June 9th, the Elijah List and I had decided it was a good fit, and that I would be hired to do various kinds of computer work. And I found a nice house to rent. It was an amazing week, with God confirming in many different ways that this was indeed His next step for us.

As soon as I arrived back in Santa Maria on June 10th, we started making preparations to move. Needless to say, its' A LOT of work! Thirteen days later we were heading north with our first U-Haul truck packed to the gills. When we stopped for the night in Redding, in northern California, it was still 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees Celsius) at 8:00 in the evening!

We arrived in Albany on June 24th, unloaded the truck, and then spent a few days trying to sort things out in our new house. And it really is a new house...it's right on the edge of town, and we're the first ones to live in it. Then we headed back down south in order to wrap things up in Santa Maria. On the way we spent the night in San Francisco, checking out the sights around Fisherman's Wharf.

While we were preparing our second and last load, Joanne and Jeremy went to church summer camp for a few days. Then we celebrated the Fourth of July with the extended family in Santa Maria. After many long hours, the house was emptied, the U-Haul truck was stuffed full again, and we were on the road again on July 8th, but this time we were taking a different route. There's an amazing story to that....

When I had been looking for a house to rent that first week in June, it was hard to find one that was the right size, at the right price, not too far away from work, that would allow us to keep Joanne's rabbits. When I checked out the house we are now in, I had a sense of peace that it was the house that God had for us. So Catherine told me to go ahead and rent it, even before she could see it for herself.

I asked the landlady if we could bring the rabbits, even though the advertisement had said "no pets." She asked her brother (the owner), and he said that "no pets" meant no pets. So, unfortunately, that was that, and we would have to try to figure out what else we could do with the rabbits.

Then, when we were back in Santa Maria in between our first and second loads, the landlady e-mailed us, totally out of the blue, to tell us that her brother had changed his mind, and that we could bring the rabbits after all, without us even asking them to reconsider! From what the landlady told me, she had been looking at this very blog page, and saw down at the Christmas entry that Joanne had been saving up her money to buy a rabbit hutch. She told her brother about it, and once he had taken a look, he decided that Joanne could have the rabbits at the house after all! I can assure you that lots of people had been praying about the destiny of these rabbits!

But the next problem was how to safely get them to Albany. The excessive heat of central California on Interstate 5 (remember how hot it was in Redding that evening we were there) might be the death of them. The only solution was to take highway 101 up the coast, spending the night in Eureka, where it would not be hot. I contacted some YWAM friends there, and they let us put the rabbits at their house overnight while we were in the hotel.

It was a long haul, but by July 9th we made our final arrival in Albany, exactly one month to the day since being hired at the Elijah List. Everything went fine, but I have a word of advice for anyone making a similar move: use highway 5 instead of 101! It will be much shorter and less tiring. At least the on second trip we were using a smaller U-Haul truck.

So we have been living in Albany for about 3 weeks. Now that we don't live near the ocean any more, it has been quite hot. Thankfully our new house has air conditioning. And after seeing the first electricity bill and noticing that the price of electricity here is about 60% cheaper than what we were paying in Santa Maria, we're not too afraid to use it! For a couple of weeks it was in the 90's and 100's, but for now it has cooled down a bit. I never thought I would see the day when 80 degrees would seem "cool"!

I started work at the Elijah List on July 17th. The previous week I absolutely needed to find myself a car. I have dreamed of owning a PT Cruiser for quite a number of years. The first day I went looking I found a nice used one, so now I cruise my PT to work each day. What a dream come true!

My job is also a dream come true. I was longing to find a job that had eternal value, that was somewhere other than California, at an organization that really needed and wanted me. All of these criteria have been fulfilled in an awesome way. And during the entire move I felt as if I were being carried along in a dream. It's not for no reason that the street before ours is called Whirlwind! Stay tuned for further details....
 

Olivia contemplates the move

Box after box after box!

A moving vacation in San Fran

 

May 2006
 
This has been a busy month wrapping up my classes at Hancock Community College, where, if you remember from my January entry below, I was taking three classes: C++ (computer programming), Cisco networking fundamentals (computer networks), and Maya (3D modeling and animation, used extensively in the Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and a multitude other movies and videos). I did well, pretty much at the top of each class.

Something is finally starting to take shape on the job front. There is a possibility that I could be working with The Elijah List, in Albany, Oregon. It's about 840 miles north of where we live now in Santa Maria, California. I'll be going there for an interview and to check things out in early June. You can find out more about The Elijah List here.

Stay tuned for the June Blog to find out if we'll be moving to Albany, or staying in Santa Maria.
 

April 2006
 
Recently I happened to look up the word "chrysalis" in my Encarta dictionary, and it had the following definition, which really struck me:

"An insect at the stage of changing from larva to adult, during which it is inactive and encased in a hard cocoon."

March 2006
 
Well, here it is ... March 1st. Ash Wednesday. My son's hamster Nipper died today. It's my first day of unemployment.

A lot of my dreams seem to be buried in the same hole as that hamster. But I guess you can't have a resurrection without a death.

Jesus said it this way: "Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, you'll have it forever, real and eternal. If any of you wants to serve Me, then follow Me. Then you'll be where I am, ready to serve at a moment's notice." (John 12:24-26)

As of today I have applied for 10 jobs at 8 different organizations: 4 in the Santa Maria area, and 4 around the country in Oregon, Kentucky, Georgia and Virginia.

It feels great to finally close the chapter on my previous life circumstances. I'm looking forward to the new, fresh things the Lord will bring into my life.

Pray for us. We'll keep you posted as things develop.
 

January 2006
 
What's new with the Swiss Byrd family for 2006? Funny you should ask!

First of all, we have removed our entire Web site, except for this page. Our Web site was getting old and dated; we don't have the time these days to give it an update. Hopefully sometime in the future.

But, more critically, I, Brian, will be without a job come March 1st. (How appropriate that March 1st is Ash Wednesday this year!) As you can imagine, the Swiss Byrd family will experience major changes this year.

The leadership overseeing the Santa Maria Healing Rooms decided that the bookstore I was running was not living up to their expectations to finance the entire Healing Rooms ministry, so they decided to pull the plug. I had already told them that I was wanting to leave the Healing Rooms in the not-too-distant future.

The first year or so of working for the Healing Rooms was very interesting and challenging, because I was creating the entire software infrastructure of the online store single-handedly, from scratch. But once things moved from the "pioneering" stage to the "settler" stage, and running the bookstore went from creating to maintaining, I started to become more and more dissatisfied. Most of my "high end" computer skills were not being used, and I was becoming intellectually and emotionally unfulfilled, because I was working primarily as a shipping/receiving clerk.

So I have been praying for a good two and a half years now, asking God to show me what the next step for me is after the Healing Rooms. And for two years I have not received an answer. Even with me losing my job, I'm still waiting for direction from God. Hopefully it is going to come sooner rather than later.

After working for almost exactly four years at the Healing Rooms, I am definitely ready for a change. In fact, for the last couple of months of 2005 I was already looking for another job. So, actually, I am quite happy to be leaving the Healing Rooms. But I was really wanting to find a new job BEFORE I left, not after! Oh well, I guess you can't have everything!

I would love to find a job in the video editing and/or motion graphics area, even though that's not my major area of expertise. If that's not possible, I would settle for a computer programming job. I'm really hoping to find a job in which I can do meaningful work with eternal value, but which will also be intellectually and emotionally satisfying, allowing me to use the many skills and talents I have developed over the last 25 years.

To keep myself well occupied and to enhance my value as an employee, I am taking three classes this semester at the local community college: C++ (computer programming), Cisco networking fundamentals (computer networks), and Maya (3D modeling and animation, used extensively in the Lord of the Rings and numerous other movies). It's kind of discouraging to think that in January 1981 I was attending Hancock College, working towards a career, and now 25 years later I'm in the same boat, attending the same college, hoping for a career. Life doesn't usually turn out the way we expect!

Regarding location, I would like to leave Santa Maria. I grew up here, and I've thought for a long time that since the U.S. is a great big country, there must be many wonderful, interesting places to live in a land this size. Why not experience some other part? It's also interesting that this February it will be eight years that we have been living in Santa Maria. Before that, we had lived in Switzerland the first eight years of our marriage.

So far, I have applied for three jobs: one in Santa Maria, one near Cincinnati, and one in Oregon. I've not heard a definite "yes" or "no" from any of them... the application process seems to drag on and on, and get bogged down in the internal workings of each organization. Now, with Ash Wednesday approaching, time seems to be getting short, especially if it involves moving out of state. You can bet I'll be wearing ashes if March 1st rolls around and I am still unemployed!

It's been many, many years now that I am continually offering God my entire life for His purposes on this earth. I am very determined to live my life completely for God and try to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit no matter where the path leads. Though outwardly I seem to have a "normal" life, inwardly I feel like I'm on a journey of the heart, to places I never expected in my idea of what the Christian life "should" be.

The closest analogy I can think of is Much Afraid's journey in "Hind's Feet On High Places." Rather than going straight up to the High Places, she had to go on a hard, strange, and sometimes disappointing journey through deserts and lonely sea shores, and many other places that she never expected. So I'm willing to walk on a strange path, like Much Afraid did, trusting in the Lord's ability to deliver me from deception, presumption, selfishness, and all the other snares of the enemy.

So I find myself in this very awkward and uncomfortable place of not knowing where I fit in the world. I feel like I'm not religious enough to fit into the Christian culture, and I'm not pagan enough to fit into the pagan culture. Maybe I could get a job at a secular TV station, but I'm concerned that I wouldn't last long working with that kind of moral sewage. But I'm also concerned that I might not fit into a Christian organization either, if I had to live up to a list (written or unwritten) of what you have to do or not do to be considered a Christian. So I feel kind of stuck, not knowing where I fit in God's scheme of things.

But as soon as I find out where we are supposed to live and what I'm supposed to be doing for work, I'll be sure to let you know, right here on this page. Until then... Shalom.