Joe's 64th Birthday

Joe's birthday was February 14th. Joe was nauseous most of the last few months of his life but this evening he was able to enjoy a good meal. I hate the heat of summer in Texas but how cool that we could enjoy a perfect evening in February in 70 degree temperatures. What a nice gift from God!

Always obnoxious :-)

Brenna and her then boyfriend

Joe and Brenna

I have purposed to catch up on this blog. I am going to put up things from the last year or so and bring it up to date. I would like to start with some of the last things that Joe and Brenna worked on together. As he got weaker Brenna became his hands for home repairs and working on the vehicles.

In these pictures, we had bought some new hardware for the kitchen cupboards. Joe was too weak to put them in but he sat behind Brenna and directed her. These were taken end of January.

Being Christ

Our wonderful Pastor Ron and Jeremy sacrificed a whole evening to install a hand rail on our back steps for Joe. While they were at it they fixed some bad wiring they found. 

Ron says Jeremy is his level headed friend

Thank you for being Christ to us and meeting a need so lovingly. We are truly touched. This is something I am learning about, what it truly means to be a body of Christ. To support one another, to love on one another, to come alongside and to encourage. Many many people have been doing that for us but I can't take pictures of kind words. Thank you to all.

Jeremy gets ready to drill a hole in the brick

Ron is in the details

Hospice

(sent out April 17th, 2013)

This has been a very hard day, following another hard night. I started the day planting myself firmly on the rock. This was my verse.

Ps 61.1-4

Hear my cry, O God;

Attend to my prayer.

From the end of the earth I will cry to You,

When my heart is overwhelmed;

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

For You have been a shelter for me,

A strong tower from the enemy.

I will abide in Your tabernacle forever;

I will trust in the shelter of Your wings.

We have received amazing love and support through all of this, people coming with hugs, phone calls of love and support, meals, ice cream J, advise and even mowing our yard.

Joe has been amazingly cheerful through all of this. He is increasingly delusional because of the ammonia backing up in his body but has turned that into funny comments, staying positive and sweet through everything. What an amazing man I am married to, and what an amazing healing God has done in his heart. He is barely lucid now. We opted to keep him home for this last stage as that was his wish. We have him on strong medications to ease the pain and nausea and take shifts watching over him. Praise the Lord He sent Katrina to us. Please pray for a smooth passing.

Thank you.

Teri
(Joe passed onto heaven later on on this day)

(sent out originally April 13, 2013)

On March 19th we found out that Joe's bladder cancer had metastasized all over his body. We spent the rest of the week in the hospital getting his pain and nausea issues under control. 

We brought him home and put hospice in place. He has been stable but still fighting nausea. This last Tuesday he took a sharp turn for the worst. We found that a lot of things were out of wack but the most significant is that the cancer has now grown into the bowels and closed them off. It is inoperable. He is reasonably stable now and at home on hospice care. We are told that it is a few days to a couple of weeks or so till he goes home to meet Jesus.

Through this journey God has met our needs at every turn. We are very sad but at great peace. This is the passage that God gave us during this last stay in the hospital right before we found out there was nothing more they could do.

Ps 116:I love the Lord, for He hears my voice;He hears my cry for mercy.Because He turns His ear to me,I will call on Him as long as I live.The cords of death entangle me,the anguish of the grave comes over me;I am overcome by distress and sorrow.
Then I call on the name of the Lord:“Lord, save me!”The Lord is gracious and righteous;our God is full of compassion.The Lord protects the unwary;when I am brought low, He saves me.Return to your rest, my soul,for the Lord has been good to you.For you, Lord, have delivered me from death,my eyes from tears,my feet from stumbling,that I may walk before the Lordin the land of the living. Precious in the sight of the Lordis the death of his faithful servants.Truly I am your servant, Lord;I serve you just as my mother did;you have freed me from my chains."

My niece Katrina is here from Spokane for two weeks, having arrived one day before we found all this out and has been a God send, helping with shopping and meals and Brenna. We covet your prayers.

Teri

_____________________________

(sent out originally  March 23rd )

We know that God is all powerful and is intently --- involved in --- concerned with --- focused on --- every aspect of our lives. We know that from passages such as Psalms 139:

“…You know everything about me… when I sit down or stand up… my thoughts… when I travel and when I rest… what I am going to say even before I say it. You go before me and follow me and place Your hand of blessing upon my head” (vs 1-6)

We know that we are the apple of His eye, or more accurately in the original language, we are the pupil or intense focus of His eye. So why are we surprised when He plans things ahead of time for our comfort and encouragement.

This was our devotion the second day after we found out about Joe’s cancer metastasizing.

 (from Jesus Calling, March 21^st)

“Trust Me and Don’t be afraid, for I am your Strength and Song. Think what it means to have Me as your Strength. I spoke the universe into existence, My Power is absolutely unlimited! Human weakness, consecrated to Me, is like a magnet, drawing My Power into your neediness. However, fear can block the flow of My Strength into you. Instead of trying to fight your fears, concentrate on trusting Me. When you relate to me in Confident trust, there is no limit to how much I can strengthen you.

                Remember that I am also your Song. I want you to share My Joy, living in conscious awareness of My Presence. Rejoice as we journey together toward heaven; join Me in singing My Song. “

Isaiah 12:2-3

“See, God has come to save me. I will trust in Him and not be afraid.

The Lord God is my strength and my song;

He has given me victory.

With Joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation!”

Ps 21:6

“You have endowed him with eternal blessings, and given him the joy of Your presence. 

That same day, which was Wed, one of Joe's nurses from past hospital stays found out he was in and came by and encouraged us, saying we are all family and we all hurt together. He prayed with us an awesome encouraging prayer and gave us his phone number, offering to drive out to Longview (from Shreveport, an hour’s drive) any time we need him. How awesome is that.

Thursday and Friday were harder with a very irritating roommate who talked non-stop but the doctors and nurses were awesome.

Joe is home now, resting well and feeling better now that they have the pain under control. We see the hospice nurse this afternoon.

If you want to come and visit, please feel free. He loves visitors. Please come to the back door. Call him to let him know you’re coming so he doesn’t try and rush out of bed. Afternoons are generally better for him.  253-228-5044

Thank you for all your continuing prayers and love and comfort.

Love

Teri

Metastasized

(Sent out March 20th)

Our scripture today is Psalms 61:

"O God, listen to my cry!
    Hear my prayer!
From the ends of the earth,
    I cry to You for help
    when my heart is overwhelmed.
Lead me to the towering rock of safety,
    for You are my safe refuge"

We got the results of Joe's CAT scan yesterday. It shows his cancer heavily metastasized all over, which explains the increasing nausea and pain. We are out of treatment options of course. He is at the VA right now getting the pain under control. We had a long talk with the palliative  care specialist and got services in place to help Joe come home and be comfortable and well cared for. We hope that will be by Friday. He is doing well in his spirit. 

We are all amazed at the peace God is giving us through all of this. The peace of God truly does pass all understanding. We can trace quite clearly how He has brought things into place to prepare us for this. One of the things that has been really cool has been all the people who have been contacting us in the last two weeks saying they were praying heavily for Joe but didn't know why. :-)

Thank you for your continuing prayers and love

Teri

A Date With Jesus

We had the most awesome all night prayer meeting through Women of Hope, an Alliance women’s prayer group that meets once a month to share, pray for and support our missionaries. When I first heard we were doing this I thought, ‘Oh my, I love prayer meetings but ALL NIGHT? That is a bit much” but actually it wasn’t, in fact it there were so many things to do, creative ways to pray that I did not get to do everything that I wanted to. It was an awesome life changing experience, to have this date night with my Lord.  Here are some of the things we did.

The church was divided up into different prayer areas with various themes and “activities”. We opened the evening and each round of prayer time with a worship time together. These times were focused on different aspects of our relationship with God, starting with

Worship of God, our Creator

Our Savior (focus on vision)

Our King (focus on Confession and forgiveness)

Our Shepherd (focus on contemplative scripture reading)

Our Master (focus on telling our story)

Our Father

Our Bridegroom

Our indwelling Christ

In these times after a very brief focus talk we sang a set of three songs. One song was sung, then we shared discussed the concept brought out in the song, did small prayers, shared scriptures and basically meditated together on the given aspect of God.

I Surrender All

Afterwards we went to private prayer areas scattered around the church. I only got a few pictures of them because I didn’t have time as we were still setting up as people were showing up and I went home and got some sleep and checked on Joe and when I came back a lot of them were pulled down, but this is what we had.

Vision

Delight and Cling

Living Water

Hope and Pain

•   A cross called the “Surrender All” area. This is where areas that you have been holding back from Jesus, things that are blocking your relationship are written on a paper and nailed to the cross.
• Vision: Where we prayed about our vision for the church and our ministry, individually and as a church. In this we have a need to start mentoring relationships with the people in the African church so we also prayed about that.
• Delight and Cling: which was where we focused on delighting in the Lord and Clinging to Him. To get the feeling of Him clinging to us or covering us there were beautiful silk prayer shawls in this area that you covered yourself with to get the sensation of the Holy Spirit covering you
•  Living Water: Had a bunch of verses on the Holy Spirit and the Living water of Christ. There was a small water fountain and a basket of stones. You held the stones in your hands and felt the weight of the things that we cling to that keep us from being filled with the Holy Spirit. You work on letting go of the weight that blocks you from being filled with the water.
•  Hope and Pain. In this area you had some black paper on the walls with some verses. You wrote on the walls pain you are having or others that you know are having; mentally, emotionally, spiritually. physically and prayed for them. Or you could pray for other ones that were written there.
•  Missions: A globe was placed on the table and you set down and picked a country to pray over, for the spreading of the gospel, for the missionaries there etc. After you prayed for the country you put some play dough over that country. The goal was to have every country prayed for by the end of the night.
•  Missionaries. A table with the prayer cards of our various missionaries was set out so you could pray over them.
•  Loved Ones: A basket was placed in the middle of the table. Jaggedly cut out papers were scattered around it. You put the initials of each of your loved ones who don’t know Jesus or are in special need on the jagged paper and prayed over them, then dropped them in the basket for the Fisher of Men to fish them out.
•  Family and marriage: A table was covered with butcher paper and you wrote on it prayer for family, for marriages etc. and prayed for them. This room was set up so it could be a small group prayer time or counseling time also.
•  Confession: In this room there were two things. One was butcher paper on the wall on which you wrote “Confess my sins” “Confess myself” (-ishness things) “Confess My God” (the things He does and is). On the floor were blocks covered in butcher paper. On this you wrote things that are blocking you from God, stacked them up and knocked down the walls.
• ' Pray' dough and other Arts for praying: in this area you could pray with dough, shaping the things God was saying to you or teaching you or that you want to give to Him or whatever, there were pens for writing or drawing your prayers out.
•  There was an area where they danced the prayers during one session in the evening
• There were individual rooms set up for private prayer.
•  There was a time of prayer drums “Soldiers of God”

We did these prayer times for a half hour to 45 minutes and then came back together and had 

• "Circle of Blessing” where each woman was put into the middle of the women some time during the night. A prayer shawl was wrapped around her. She shared her special needs and we all laid hands on and prayed for her. This was a totally cool time.

There was also a sleeping area and a snack and visiting area set aside. Altogether it was one of the most awesome nights I have ever spent with my Lord.

2012 Year of Service

Something I should have done a long time ago, start sharing on this blog the work that I do for the Lord through Missionary TECH Team. If you don't know, I am a graphic designer. I do literature, displays and web stuff for Christian missions and missionaries all over the world. I thought that my supporters would like to see what I do. I usually put a few in each prayer letter. have been meaning to post the this as I go but this year has been very overwhelming emotionally with Joe's 5 heart attacks and cancer issues. You can read more about that on the blog through the link above "Teri's Thoughts. Anyway, here we go.

I am only going to post stuff that is my desing work. A lot of work that I do is web updates on various websites and a lot of print production work, some of which is other peoples designs.

I originally did a prayer card for the DeLuca Family,
Church planters in Greece 

And then I did a ShowStyle panels and header design
off of the prayer card design preferences. 

The Hedges are bible translators in Chad Africa. 

This is a Table Top X-Pole display I did for them

I also did three newsletters for the Hedges this year.
We came up with a tempate they like
and just make slight variations on each
newsletter to save them design hours. 

This was a lot of fun. We had printed two other banners similar. He wanted a 4th one to coordinate. Another designer did the orrigionals. I reprinted the one on the left and designed the one on the right to go with them, introducing their new solar bible. Mr. Yates is a church planter with the Myan people in South America. He was crazy full of energy. We went through his pictures on his computer to see what would work. He told me all kinds of crazy stories including the one where he showed up to visit this old man and the man served him rat soup, which he of course ate. He showed me pictures of the rat.. it was whole... yum. He wanted to show me video's of him eating grub worms but I declined.

Every year we do a vynil banner for an Red River Honors Camp. They are always very unique. This year he got permission to use the Army for One logo designed for another mission and I designed this banner and a coordinating T-shirt design around it.

Most people come to us with very definate ideas of what they want their displays to look like, usually very conservative and centered. I was happy to push this one for a very conservative bible collage just a bit and give it a little more movement. The client and I were both very happy with the final design. This is a header for a ShowStyle display.

I did alot of work for ReachAcross this year. They are a ministry to Muslim cultures in a lot of different countries. Here are 4 of the 7 banners I did for them this year. They are based on past designs developed by Amy, who used to be a designer here at TECH. I have just modified them a bit.

Huttons, church planters in Ireland. Cool font I found, huh?!


Opps, I ran out of time. Will add more to this later.