It's been one week since we got home and it's been a pretty good week.  We are actually now into week two.  Other than getting over some serious jet-lag, we have gotten an appointment for Jack at the St. Louis Children's Hospital.  He will see the chief gastroenterologist there on March 24^th.  We wish he could get in sooner than that but we're thankful that we got in that soon and not in 3 months time.  We also got an application in to an organization that loans vehicles to missionaries home on furlough.  We will call them today, actually, to see if they will be able to help us in this way. We'd appreciate your prayers that we can get a vehicle soon, whether through them or another avenue. 

 

Jack celebrated his 3^rd birthday last Wednesday.  Due to being in the thick of jet-lag still, we only celebrated with pancakes for breakfast (candles included) but this Saturday will be the big party!  We don't have much planned till the appointment.  This is difficult for us in some ways; sitting still is not easy.  We will be having some meetings with folks from our member care department and will get together with our Pastor and his wife.  We aren't sure what God has for us during this time home except for getting Jack's health cared for.  Please pray that if God has things for us to do while we are home, that we would be sensitive to His leading and that we can perhaps be a blessing to others.

 

We'll check in again soon! 

Finally Photos

Finally we are posting photos again to make things a bit more interesting.  Our camera has been broken so we are now using Mom's. 

 

The photos are as follows:

 

Jack, the birthday boy – He's 3!!!

Owen, under the table, trying to get Chloe the cat!

Jack and Poppi, coloring together

Poppi, kissing Owen

 

An Update

Sorry, I forgot to send our last update to the blog. Sorry if you've been waiting to see what we decided!

 

Here is the news!

 

This has been a long road and thankfully, we are not alone in so many ways.  God is with us, we have great leadership both here in Indonesia and at our home church in Missouri and we all put our heads together these past few weeks.  I'll spare you the details of all the meetings together and chatting via the internet and sum it up with this.  With the support of our leadership, we believe the best thing to do is to take Jack home to the US to seek further medical help.  We believe we have exhausted all of our options here on this side of the world and we don't feel like we can wait any longer to pursue serious medical help for Jack.  His weight is not increasing as it should, his appetite has decreased significantly (his 9 month old brother eats twice what he does), and we fear that he will have growth problems later if we don't figure this out now. 

 

We have been researching children's hospitals at home and are in the process of communicating with them to see about seeing several doctors.  We will, at first, be in Springfield to get through jet-lag and as soon as possible begin seeing doctors.  We have no idea how long this will all take or what the future holds for us.  As we said in the last update, this year has held so much in it that we never expected.  We have faced huge dissapointments, realizing that our expectations were way too high, several very bigs moves, had many medical things to deal with and now are facing returning to the US once again.  One thing that has remained constant is our faith that God is still God, he IS in control, we want to be used of Him to glorify Him and He never changes! 

 

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for staying with us through this journey, for praying with us, encouraging us, supporting us.  Our hearts are still to see the unreached peoples of this world reached with the good news of God's saving grace.  And we want to make it clear that we are NOT leaving missions or NTM.

 

Some specific things you can be praying for:

·         To find the right doctors who will be willing to see this through and help us find the answers to why Jack is sick

·         If we have to go outside Springfield to see the doctors, that we would be able to find inexpensive lodging and transportation

·         Grace to keep enduring and not give up

·         Patience to wait when we need to wait

·         Our recommended support level was just raised a good bit. We find now that we are only at about 60% of that recommended level.

·         That with each day, we would focus on God and not the "problem" at hand – that He would be our source of strength

·         For clear direction about our future

 

We will keep you posted once we get home (February 17^th) and have recuperated from the trip.

 

1 down

We made it to Singapore this afternoon.  Our flight was great, no problems and we are resting as best we can in the hotel room.  We leave for the airport at 3:30am so it will be a short night of sleep but hopefully the boys will sleep on the plane.  Oh, our documents arrived mid day yesterday, literally minutes after we prayed that God would bring them to us in time.  A good reminder that His timing is perfect and He wants us to trust Him.

 

Jack's cold is still hanging on and he has a terrible cough.  He's pretty miserable with it so please pray for him to have some relief while we are flying. The air can be pretty dry in the airplane, which makes breathing all the harder.  We decided to start the antibiotic just in case so hopefully, if he does not have a bacterial infection, he can get some relief this way.  You should hear him!  His voice makes him sound so funny!

 

Well, we are looking forward to getting home soon – snow and all!  We have an apt with a family practice doctor Feb. 29^th (thank you Jolene!) so we at least have somewhere to begin for Jack.  We will post again after we get back to Springfield.

 

 

We're Here

We made it safely home to Springfield MO yesterday afternoon. Thanks for praying as you did. While the reality is it was a long and tiring flight, the boys did sleep well, better than previous trips. Thanks for specifically praying for that.
We're incredibly tired and this week won't do much besides rest and adjust. We're staying with Bethany's mom and have the whole upstairs as our own 'suite' and it's nice to have something more than the 12 square feet that we occupied for over 20 hours of flying...
Jack's first scheduled appointment is Feb 29th which allows for some goo adjustment time. We'll have some more news soon I'm sure. But for now, we're back in the US and looking to our God for what each day holds.

last minute update

We thought perhaps we were at a point where we would be able to decrease the amount of posts asking for prayer but we find ourselves again in need of it.  Yesterday, Jack, Bethany and Owen all came down with a viral infection (cough, fever, congestion).  Today we're not much better and Owen actually got really sick this afternoon and had a very high fever. 

 

Please pray that this subsides before we fly on Saturday morning.  We do have an 18 hour layover in Singapore before we have to fly again so that gives us a bit more time.  Being that it's a virus, we can't do much to help it except take over the counter cold medicine. 

 

We've got antibiotics just in case things get worse, but we really need your prayers for some better health by Saturday morning. We're also waiting on a critical document that we have to use to get out of the country, pray that it arrives on time Friday so that we won't have to change any flights.

 

We're so thankful for such a body of people to be praying for us!

 

 

Phones Are Working Again

Just wanted to let you know that our phone service has seemingly been restored. Though if there's another absense of communication for several days, it could still be phone problems. Be praying that it'll stay on, our ability to communicate is so critical right now!

 

Joel

Heidie

On our last post, someone left an anonymous comment that was so encouraging but we don't know who you are.  Please email us and make yourself known!  We'd love to thank you personally!

 

Bethany

 

P.S.  For the rest of you. We still don't know what we're going to do in all this.  Please keep praying.  There are many things to consider and it seems there is no clear cut answer.  God has not chosen to make His will known yet so we are still waiting.  PLEASE PRAY with us!

Internet/Phone problems

Just to let you all know, we are having phone problems here and so have had a hard time getting on line.  Please be patient with us.  We still have not made a final decision re: what to do with Jack's health issues so keep praying. Maybe tomorrow, we'll know!

 

Bethany