Sharing My Story

I arrived at my brother's winter home in Green Valley,
Arizona early in the morning on August 4th, 2004 from
a late night plane flight from Kansas City, Missouri.
Green Valley is a retirement community about 25 miles
south of Tucson and is composed of a number of home
owner associations. I decided to stay in Arizona rather
that going somewhere for a job I thought I would look
for work in the area I was in. I went about looking for
employment and did some work as a job traffic person at
the local newspaper (the Green Valley News). This lasted
around three months. In early 2005 I got a part-time job
as a custodian at a nearby post office which lasted for
just over three years. During that time I also got another
part time job with Green Valley Recreation. This job
started in November 2006 an and I am currently still
working with GVR as a Facilities Service Coornidinator
(basically custodial work).

I have gotten involved with a local church, the
Evangelical Free Church of Green Valley, which is
a good Bible believing church. It is a healthy and
very missions minded church. I was involved for
several years doing PR and design work for them.
Most recently I was involved in a Christmas related
drama (see report in my December posts). I've gotten
to know the Pastor for Outreach, Bruce Van Sickle
and we have been involved in regular prayer walking
in the local community.

I have gotten involved to a certain extent with
the local comics scene. I attended for a while a
group of local cartoonists that met at a comics
shop in Tucson. I was able to see aa Golden
Protector story published in the third issue
of Sequentially Tucson, a locally produced
small press comic book. Through these meeting
I met James Babcock a local cartoonist who
I've maintained contact (lunch appointments, etc)
with over the past two and a half years.

My interest in comic book research has continued
and in November 2009 I had an extensive article
on an old comic book character (Bulletman by
Fawcett Comics from the 1940s) published by a
speciality publisher located in Florida.
This was a gratifiying experience.

Also I have been a regular attender of the
Arizona Origins Science Association Southern
Division and have encouraged several speakers
for the Tucson meetings to also speak at our
church in Green Valley and have recommended
speakers to the Origins leadership.

During this time I have continued publishing
in the Apa, Alpha-Omega and have been on the
Board of the Christian Comic Arts Society which
several months ago became an official non-profit.
I have represented CCAS at the 2008 and 2009
Tucson Comic Con.

In September 2007 I joined the Elephant Head
Art Guild, a group of local artists who met weekly
at Tom Arndt's studio in nearby Amado, Arizona
(actually a rural area near Amado). We have had
several shows over the years and it been a good
and valuable experience getting back into painting.
More recently I have jointed the Santa Rita Art League
and in December I had one of my paintings in their
first Juried Show.

With this post I am concluding my multi-year
on-line auto-biography. I will probably have more
posts occasionally as time permits. Now I plan and
organizing this material in a printed form for my
own files. God bless you for reading any part of
this presentation.

During the summer of 2002 (living in Crosbyton, Texas)
I was sending out resume letters to prospective employers.
I decided to give Intercristo another try for prospective
employers with the Christian community. One possible
employer that I discovered from Intercristo was a
women's ministry group called Stonecroft Ministries.
While Stonecroft wasn't a familiar name to me I had
heard of the Christian Women's Clubs while I was
living in Washington as a young person.

I got in contact with Stonecroft who was advertising
to fill a publications manager's position. They saw
enough in my resume to cause them to issue an invitation
to visit their Kansas City, Missouri headquarters for
a job interview (late August 2002). While the position
I interviewed for was filled by someone from inside
the organization I did eventually take another position
with them.

I moved from Texas to Missouri in late February 2003.
For most of my time at Stonecroft I worked in the Book
Department and later for several months with their
internet/website department.

While in Kansas City I attended the Westbrook Church
and became involved with the Creation Science Association
of Mid-America attending their meetings and going on
several of their field trips. I was also active in
the Comic Creator's Network in Kansas City going to
their meetings and even became involved with one of
their 24 hour comics sessions. I had a comic strip
published in one of their published anthologies
(Show & Tell #2). During this time I also went to
Pennsylvania for the International Conference on
Creationism (2003) and made a trip to Chicago for
a summit of Christian comic artists (2004).

However, my time with Stonecroft proved to be
short-lived as I left Kansas City in early August
of 2004 for southeast Arizona.