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Monday, March 28, 2016
For Immediate Release
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The Passing of Senior Pastor, Reverend Lawrence P. Gaines
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Statement from Greater Grace Fellowship:
NEW ORLEANS - "It is with great sadness that Greater Grace Fellowship announces the passing of Senior Pastor, Reverend Lawrence P. Gaines into the arms of our Father, Creator and Comforter. Arrangements will be announced at later date."
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Reverend Lawrence Peter Gaines |
Bio at time of death: Reverend Lawrence Peter Gaines is a native of New Orleans, LA. Rev. Gaines received his call to Christian ministry at the age of 17. He is a descendant of a devout Christian family where his father, the late Joseph L. Gaines, was an ordained elder minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church before pastoring a Baptist church.
His paternal grandfather, the late Reverend Doctor Lawrence Gaines, a Baptist minister as well as his maternal great-grandfather, the late Reverend Ford Ratcliff, Sr., a Presiding Elder in the AME Zion Church.
With such a rich, solid foundation, it is no wonder that Lawrence P. Gaines was called and accepted the call to ministry early in life. Early recollections of family members are of him at 8 years of age preaching using a makeshift pulpit, microphone, and proclaiming the prophetic words of Nicodemus, "You must be born again!"
Rev. Gaines received an Associate Degree from McNeese University, Lake Charles, LA., a baccalaureate degree in Business Management from Dillard University, New Orleans, LA., and is currently enrolled in the MBA program at Utica College & University, New York. His seminary education includes two years at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. He continues to expand his Christian education through participation in biblical offerings throughout the year.
Rev. Gaines pastored successfully in several denominations and local churches, receiving high accolades and followship. A leader in the truest sense, Rev. Gaines conceives and delivers a worship environment for people hungry to know the gospel of Jesus Christ. He presents the Word of God in an unadulterated, yet applicable manner. He serves as senior pastor of Greater Grace Fellowship, an interdenominational ministry, established in May 2013.
The ministry of Rev. Gaines is framed on the Greater Grace Fellowship vision which purposes "to present the gospel passionately, love people unconditionally, and develop and equip disciples who strive to transform the world for Jesus Christ. " It is from this paradigm that he delivers the purest gospel messages, exhorts his congregants to hear them and then go out to prove their relevance in a hurting world.
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Life Reimagined checkup at the AARP Community Resource Center
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On Tuesday, March 29 at 6 p.m., attend a FREE Life Reimagined checkup at the AARP Community Resource Center, 3502 South Carrollton Avenue, Suite C.
A Life Reimagined checkup provides you with a step-by-step approach to get you inspired about your possibilities and discover practical tools to help you plan your next move.
To register for this FREE checkup, call 877-926-8300 or visithttps://aarp.cvent.com/LifeReimagined03-29-16
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Businessman Donald T. "Boysie" Bollinger Continues to Give Back to New Orleans Community by Helping Young Entrepreneurs Open New Business on Lemonade Day
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Donald T. "Boysie" Bollinger |
NEW ORLEANS -
Bollinger Enterprises, LLC, Chairman and CEO Donald T. "Boysie" Bollinger, will serve as the official New Orleans City Champion for Lemonade Day Louisiana's sixth annual celebration. More than 20,000 kids across Louisiana are expected to participate in the popular youth initiative on Saturday, April 30. Last week, Bollinger joined the Saints, Pelicans, Lemonade Day Louisiana Co-Founder and Georges Enterprises CEO John Georges, and dozens of youth at a special conference to officially kick-off the event in New Orleans.
With his previous success as the former CEO of Bollinger Shipyards, Inc. Bollinger is continuing his legacy of helping Louisiana youth. After receiving the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Boy Scouts of America, Bollinger has been dedicated to helping youth across the state. Bollinger is no stranger to giving back to his hometown, as he devotes a considerable amount of time to professional and civic organizations such as Chairman of the Nicholls State University Foundation and Second Vice President of the Audubon Commission.
"I am truly humbled and honored to serve as this year's New Orleans City Champion for Lemonade Day Louisiana," said Bollinger. "Receiving the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Boy Scouts of America helped me to realize how important it is to get our youth active and make a difference in the community. Lemonade Day is a great start to teaching our youth the importance of entrepreneurship."
In 1971, Bollinger earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette and has been a dedicated public servant ever since. Bollinger currently serves as Chairman of First Bank and Trust, and has served as Chairman of the following organizations: Louisiana Workers' Compensation Corporation, The National World War II Museum, Shipbuilders Council of America, National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), Business Council of New Orleans, The Nature Conservancy of Louisiana, Young Presidents Organization, United Way of South Louisiana and the New Orleans Region of the Boy Scouts of America.
"Boysie has dedicated his life to serving this community and we could not think of a more befitting person to lead our efforts in New Orleans," said Jordan Piazza, Executive Director of Lemonade Day Louisiana. "Boysie cut grass as a kid and used those skills to successfully operate a successful business. As one of our inaugural sponsors, Boysie embodies everything that we look for in our city champions and we are truly honored to have him this year."
More than 20,000 youth across Louisiana are expected to participate in the program this year. On Lemonade Day, everyone has an important job to do to support these future entrepreneurs. The entire community is encouraged to purchase lemonade from the many stands that will be set-up throughout the state on Saturday, April 30th.
Lemonade Day Louisiana is a free, community-wide program that fosters entrepreneurship and character development among Louisiana's youth ages 4-18 by supporting them in establishing and operating their own lemonade businesses. Young entrepreneurs are provided with a free backpack, which contains detailed support materials including an Entrepreneur Workbook to help them establish their lemonade stand. These entrepreneurs are advised to spend a little, save a little and share a little by donating a portion of their proceeds to a local charity of their choice. After covering their expenses and paying back their investors, children are encouraged to open a youth savings account. Registration and participation is free and all youngsters are encouraged to participate. Youth can now register for the program online by visiting Louisiana.lemonadeday.org.
More than 30 corporate sponsors have teamed up to once again bring Lemonade Day to Louisiana on Saturday, April 30, 2016, including Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers, The Advocate Newspapers, CSRS, Inc., Acadian Companies, the New Orleans Saints, the New Orleans Pelicans, LED, First NBC Bank, Ochsner Health System and a host of statewide corporate sponsors and partners.
Since 2010, Lemonade Day Louisiana has provided more than 75,000 youth across Louisiana with the opportunity to become entrepreneurs. This year's program is set to be the largest to date, since entrepreneurs John Georges and Todd Graves introduced the program to Louisiana youth six years ago.
For a complete list of sponsors and partners, to sign up or learn about ways to get involved in Lemonade Day Louisiana, please visit
louisiana.lemonadeday.org.
For information about sponsorships, partnerships or donations, please contact Lemonade Day Louisiana Executive Director Jordan Piazza at ladirector@lemonadeday.org.
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New Procedure Allows Kidney Transplants From Any Donor
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by Gina Kolata, New York Times
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Clint Smith, at home in New Orleans, had a procedure that altered his immune system to allow his body to accept a kidney from an incompatible donor. It "changed my life" he said.
Credit William Widmer for The New York Times
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NEW YORK - In the anguishing wait for a new kidney, tens of thousands of patients on waiting lists may never find a match because their immune systems will reject almost any transplanted organ. Now, in a large national study that experts are calling revolutionary, researchers have found a way to get them the desperately needed procedure.
In the new study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors successfully altered patients' immune systems to allow them to accept kidneys from incompatible donors. Significantly more of those patients were still alive after eight years than patients who had remained on waiting lists or received a kidney transplanted from a deceased donor.
The method, known as desensitization, "has the potential to save many lives," said Dr. Jeffery Berns, a kidney specialist at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and the president of the National Kidney Foundation.
It could slash the wait times for thousands of people and for some, like Clint Smith, a 56-year-old lawyer in New Orleans, mean the difference between receiving a transplant and spending the rest of their lives on dialysis.
The procedure, Mr. Smith said, "changed my life."
Researchers estimate about half of the 100,000 people in the United States on waiting lists for a kidney transplant have antibodies that will attack a transplanted organ, and about 20 percent are so sensitive that finding a compatible organ is all but impossible. In addition, said Dr. Dorry Segev, the lead author of the new study and a transplant surgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, an unknown number of people with kidney failure simply give up on the waiting lists after learning that their bodies would reject just about any organ. Instead, they resign themselves to dialysis, a difficult and draining procedure that can pretty much take over a person's life.
Desensitization involves first filtering the antibodies out of a patient's blood. The patient is then given an infusion of other antibodies to provide some protection while the immune system regenerates its own antibodies. For some reason - exactly why is not known - the person's regenerated antibodies are less likely to attack the new organ, Dr. Segev said. But if the person's regenerated natural antibodies are still a concern, the patient is treated with drugs that destroy any white blood cells that might make antibodies that would attack the new kidney.
The process is expensive, costing $30,000, and uses drugs not approved for this purpose. The transplant costs about $100,000. But kidney specialists argue that desensitization is cheaper in the long run than dialysis, which costs $70,000 a year for life.
Although by far the biggest use of desensitization would be for kidney transplants, the process might be suitable for living-donor transplants of livers and lungs, researchers said. The liver is less sensitive to antibodies so there is less need for desensitization, "but it's certainly possible if there are known incompatibilities," Dr. Segev said. With lungs, he said, desensitization "is theoretically possible," although he said he was not aware of anyone doing it yet.
In the new study, 1,025 patients at 22 medical centers who had an incompatible donor were compared to an equal number of patients who remained on waiting lists for an organ or who had an organ from a deceased but compatible donor. After eight years, 76.5 percent of those who received an incompatible kidney were still alive, compared with 62.9 percent who remained on the waiting list or received a deceased donor kidney and 43.9 percent who remained on the waiting list but never got a transplant.
The desensitization procedure takes time - for some patients as long as two weeks - and is performed before the transplant operation, so patients must have a living donor. It is not known how many have someone willing to donate a kidney, but doctors say they often see situations in which a relative or even a friend is willing to donate but is incompatible.
"Often patients are told that their living donor is incompatible, so they are stuck on waiting lists," for a deceased donor, Dr. Segev said.
In recent years, an option called a kidney exchange has helped some in this situation. Patients who have incompatible living donors can swap donors with someone whose donor may be compatible with them. Often, there are chains of patient-donor pairs leading to a compatible organ swap.
That process can be successful, said Dr. Krista L. Lentine, the medical director of the living donation program at the Saint Louis Center for Transplantation, but patients often still cannot find a compatible organ because they have antibodies that would reject almost every kidney. In those cases, "desensitization may be the only realistic option for receiving a transplant," said Dr. Lentine, who was not involved with the study.
Dr. Jeffrey Campsen, a transplant surgeon at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center who also was not a study investigator, said his group focused on exchanges and had been fairly successful. But he also comes across patients whose donors do not want to participate. "There is a hurdle if the donor and patient have an emotional bond," he said.
The new data showing the success of desensitization "lets people get behind it," Dr. Campsen said, adding, "I do think it is something we would consider."
Mr. Smith, the New Orleans patient who went through desensitization, had progressive kidney disease that slowly scarred his kidneys until, in 2004, they stopped functioning. His sister-in-law, Allison Sutton, donated a kidney to him, and he had a transplant, but after six and a half years, it failed. He went on dialysis, spending four days a week hooked up to dialysis machines for hours. It was keeping him alive, he told his friends, but it was not a life.
Then a nurse suggested that he ask Johns Hopkins about its desensitization study. "I was like, whatever I could do," he said. He discovered that he qualified for the study. But he needed a donor.
One day, his wife, Sheryl Smith, was talking on the phone to a college friend, Angela Watkins, who lives in Augusta, Ga., and mentioned that Mr. Smith was praying for a donor. Mrs. Watkins's husband, David Watkins, a judge in state court, had been friends with Mr. Smith in college and the two wives, also college friends, had kept in touch over the years.
Mrs. Watkins told her husband about the conversation, and they asked themselves if they should offer to donate.
"We talked and researched and prayed," Judge Watkins said. Finally, he said, they came to a conclusion. "We have a moral obligation to at least see if we would qualify." And he thought that he should be the one to go first. If he did not qualify, his wife could be tested.
Mr. Smith warned his old friend that donating was an enormous undertaking. "He said, 'You can't grasp what you are doing.' I heard him but it didn't register," Judge Watkins said. "I told him, 'I have something you need, so what's the big deal?' "
Of course, it was a big deal. Although Judge Watkins had prepared by getting himself in top physical shape, it still took about six months to recover from the operation.
That was four years ago, and Mr. Smith's new kidney is still functioning and he is back to his active life, forever grateful to his friend.
"Every night," he says, "during my nightly prayers with my wife, I thank God for bringing David and Allison to me and for giving me the gift of life.
"But for David giving me this gift, I would still be in that dialysis chair."
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Songstress Stephanie Jordan
Jazz Live @ Hyatt Regency New Orleans beginning April 1
Every so often a new voice stands up and proclaims itself, but few do so with such supreme depth and understated soul."
- Ted Panken, Jazz at Lincoln Center Playbill
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Jazz Vocalist Stephanie Jordan is a proud user of
Audix Microphones! |
Available for Bookings
Contact:
Vincent Sylvain
504-232-3499
Vincent@SylvainSolutions.com
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JusTini Cocktails Pop Up Closet Sale
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"Bringing women together with a common interest, FASHION."
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JusTini Presents: The Closet Sale
April 3, 2016 1-6p
IBIS Inspiration Room
8539 Willow St
New Orleans, La
Join us Sunday, April 3, 2016 as we do two of our favorite things: Talking and shopping. Come shop with 9 local fashionistas while sipping on some of the best cocktails prepared by JusTini Cocktails and Jack Daniels Honey. You never know who you might meet while sipping and shopping.
Vendors featured: Shop with Tene, Ugly Betty Boy Crush, Shop Plus Rae, Fab Style Boutique, Diva Needs, Beauty War Cosmetics, JusTini's Closet, Vinti-V3, and SpreadLa.
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Visit Our Friends at Liberty Bank & Trust!
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GoToInterview is now Acrew!
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Acrew is the only "resume-less" job market place that connects employers and job seekers through brief first impression videos.
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Marc H. Morial, President & CEO
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Please visit us on the web at
NUL.org
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Pick It Up New Orleans!
An Anti-Litter Campaign by The New Orleans Agenda and Metro Service Group
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EXCELLENCE INNOVATION RESPONSIVENESS
Metro Service Group, located in New Orleans, Louisiana is a multi-faceted corporation with specific expertise and certifications in the areas of Environmental Services, Construction/Demolition and Disaster Response and Recovery. Metro Service Group is a licensed Contractor, certified in Building Construction; Heavy Construction; Highway, Street and Bridge Construction; Municipal and Public Works Construction and Solid Waste Management.
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3 Centuries of History * 6 Blocks of Shopping * Open Daily!
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Rodney & Etter, LLC is a law firm comprised of a diverse group of lawyers with backgrounds in business, government, and science. We practice in New Orleans and in Houston, and are recognized by peers and legal organizations across the United States for our outstanding record of successful settlements and litigation.
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Explore exciting graphics ideas from Signs Now that will help your business stand out from the rest - from signs and banners to digital signage and trade show displays.
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Daughters of Charity Health Centers
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ITTSME Computer Repair Specialist for your
Home or Business
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Technical Solution Center
We are a local New Orleans Business. We have certified technicians with over 20 years of experience in the Computer Repair Field. We not only want to bring you the best PC Support, but also some of the most affordable pricing today. We pride ourselves on giving our customers a valued service that can't be found anywhere else!
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I.T.T.S.M.E.
New Orleans, LA
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Your Alternative Newsletter - News, Arts, Culture & Entertainment
The New Orleans Agenda newsletter is the leading local alternative for information on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast Region. A provider of turnkey Web-Based Internet Marketing Services, we specialize in servicing community and faith-based entities, corporate and professional organizations, and arts & cultural interest events.
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| Vincent T. Sylvain, Publisher |
Sincerely,
Vincent T. Sylvain
The New Orleans Agenda
Email: Vincent@SylvainSolutions.com
Expert Solutions for Your Communication Needs!
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