Darren LeBlanc

I got a gift from Misty this week. I found a gift card to Milagro Spa at the Atlantic Club. It was from Misty from 2004! We used to get each other messages from there as a gift. Well, this time I must not have used it. It was nice.

I got a gift tonight as well…but this time not from Misty. A group of my friends showed up and we cooked dinner together. It was nice. I did promise them to post our reciple though…so here it is! We also added garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus

Chicken Marsala

1/4 cup all-purpose flour for coating
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – pounded 1/4 inch thick
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup Marsala wine
1/4 cup cooking sherry
 
DIRECTIONS
In a shallow dish or bowl, mix together the flour, salt, pepper and oregano. Coat chicken pieces in flour mixture.
In a large skillet, melt butter in oil over medium heat. Place chicken in the pan, and lightly brown. Turn over chicken pieces, and add mushrooms. Pour in wine and sherry. Cover skillet; simmer chicken 10 minutes, turning once, until no longer pink and juices run clear

I posted this tonight on http://anthemofhope.com  

NEED YOUR HELP

Things are really exciting in the AoH camp. We are approaching the home stretch of the Encouragement Disc and its associated journal (yes, we are releasing a journal with it…I’ll tell you about it soon).Part of the artwork for the actual CD cover will require a nice looking white candle. Now, I haven’t been thrilled with anything I have found locally in stores, so I’m putting this out here as a way that you can help. If you have a white candle that you think is particularly beautiful, please snap a quick picture of it and send it to me. If you want to picture message my phone from your phone just email me and I’ll give you the number (that way you don’t need to use a camera and upload the picture to email).The candle has to be white. it can be somewhat burnt or not used at all. And you have to be willing to give us the candle (I can’t promise you will get it back in the same shape).

That’s it for now. Email me at darren@anthemofhope.com if you have any ideas for us.

My daughter Olivia has a way of making me laugh regardless of what’s going on. Well, tonight we were at a family party for my sister shannon (Happy 16th Shannon!) and Olivia got a blister on the back of her heel. Yes, as you are probably thinking, this was clearly my fault for letting her wear shoes that were too small…ok, get over it, she’ll be fine.

Well on the way home the complaining settles down for about 5 minutes and she remains quiet. I figured she was going to sleep (she falls asleep in the car like 3 days a week as we are often out and about pretty late)…but I was quite wrong. All of a sudden, she yells to me:

“Daddy!”
“What baby, whats the matter?”
“Daddy, if you throw me in the ocean, I’ll ride on a turtle and my blister will be healed. But, only if I can find a turtle.”

Anyway, she was back there dreaming up this hilarious scenario of how to make her blister better. She cracks me up. I’m sure many of you have similar toddler stories :)

If you have seen my twitter updates on the right hand column of this page, or in your twitter feed…you know I’m off traveling for work. Every once in a while, this traveling turns out to let me connect with people I might not otherwise be able to.

Well, tonight I had dinner with one of my heros and her family. Michele Roberts was a huge encouragement to me and Misty as we walked through the rough times of last year. Michele was always sending encouragement, stories of healing and of course some scripture. She became a huge catalyst in building our own faith. Anyway, since I’m in the Dallas TX area I got to take her family out to dinner. This was a huge honor for me and turned out to be a wonderful time.  We grabbed dinner at Mexi-Go, headed off to wednesday evening service at their church…and finished with ice cream!

 
Michele with her boys: Bradley, Braylon and Brenton

You may have seen the website she has for her son Brenton if you have been hanging around here much…but in case you haven’t, it’s below.  He has had cancer and they are believing for a healing….and his scans have been perfect. So I’m pretty excited. Anyway, take some time to visit the website and pray for her and her family.  The mean a lot to me. I’m praying for continued strength for her. She is a pillar of faith and encouragement to so many.

You can visit:
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/brentonroberts

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I am a pack rat by nature. I recently found a track uniform from my freshman year in High School…been through 4 moves and somehow is still with me. I have no use for it…it doesn’t fit, yet I still find myself naturally unwilling to part with much of anything.

Well, my wife cured me of much of that sickness early in our marraige. I simply wasn’t allowed to keep plaid pants that I wore in the days when Ska was cool. Or shirts that had excessive pit stains (I had some serious contenders in that arena), even though I had once loved them, they had to go. So I’m ok with it now. I do ok with parting with my stuff.

Today my family crashed my house to clean my basement in preparation for construction starting next week. We are building a studio down there so I can do the bulk of the recording for the Anthem of Hope worship album (our second major product release, scheduled for late next year). I was so appreciative of the help…and despite my natural tendencies towards pack-rat-dom, I did a good job of purging the unneccesary items from my life. Unfortunately, that purge is probably going to cost me a pretty penny in dumpster fees :)

On a serious note though, I found a few books in the shuffle. One of which was a devotional book of Misty’s. I found some scripture highlighted and I wanted to share it. This was one that she had blocked out in yellow with a highlighter.

Peter 3:3-4a
³ Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. ⁴ You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within…

 The cool part is that she lived that, everyday.