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.

An Unexpected Trip

Another catching up is our wonderful trip to Washington State. We had received a much bigger tax return than we expected and after much prayer we used part of it to buy tickets to fly home to Washington, mostly to see my dad who has been very ill but also to see friends and family.

Brenna says "Hi" to the sweetest cat in the world, my sister
Alea's cat Sammy. What a funny cat, loves his armpits
scractched.

After we got the tickets Joe’s health took a sharp downward turn. What with excessive bleeding from his bladder cancer, heart attacks, blood transfusions and a procedure to burn down the tumors a bit we did not think we would be able to go. However, Joe suddenly got a bit better so, Praise the Lord, at the last minute we were able to go after all!!!!!

For the bulk of our time in Washington we stayed at my parents house on the Olympic Peninsula. They live on the hill above Manchester looking out toward Seattle there in the distance. Beautiful

My brothers Jim and Jef came to see us while we were there. Jef came up from West Linn, just south of Portland for a weekend. What a great surprise. My brother Jim, his fiance and three kids came from South Dakota. Well, I don't think they came JUST to see us but it was great timing :-).

Jim and Melissa just had a little boy, Max two weeks before. . . . . . . . As the baby was getting gifts Jef thought the girls would like something also.

Joe is sitting next to my baby brother Jim who is sitting next
to my brother Jef who is holding Jims oldest Modesty.

[below] Arn't these just the greatest purses for little girls????!!!! Jef's wife Heather found these for them. They just loved them.

Kimber and Modesty model their doggy purses

Catching up with myself

It has been forever since I have updated this. My only excuse is being overwhelmed. This blog post is intended to be a summery to bring us up to date. Most of this has been sent out in our newsletters.

This has been a crazy year. On the missions front Molly, my partner in graphics got pregnant at the beginning of this year. She was put on bed rest in January and we haven’t seen her since. She successfully had an adorable son, Sammy. She will be back to work after he is in school. This is wonderful for her but leaves me doing the bulk of the design work at TECH. I am learning a lot about RESTING in God’s strength, flying in His strength. Pinions are my friend. (Isaiah 40.28-31, from the Message) 

Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?

God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.

He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.

He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.

And he knows everything, inside and out.

He energizes those who get tired,

gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out,

young folk in their prime stumble and fall.

But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.

They spread their wings and soar like eagles,

They run and don’t get tired,

they walk and don’t lag behind.

God has been gracious and I have just been able to keep right behind the curve of the work to be done… even though the work has been gradually increasing. I know that this is God giving me the ability to be not only creative, but faster. Here are some of the jobs I have done this year…

On the health front Joe has had to date 5 heart attacks and two other stays in the hospital since the first of the year. One was to burn down or “resect” the tumors in his bladder. This was in June. The doctors all figured that he would be in step down or ICU if he survived it because his heart is so week. Much to everyone’s delight he came through great and went home the next day. They were able to stop the bleeding and burn the tumors (which have grown back very aggressively since his radiation in November of last year) down a bit and finally get a biopsy. The biopsy showed high grade aggressive cancer (which we knew) but not muscle invasive, and not metastasized. Praise the Lord!

The most recent was this past week. He has been bleeding from his bladder cancer again, forcing the huge blood clots out when he pees and being low on blood has been what has brought on a lot of the incidents. For Joe…and us, this has been an ongoing lesson in trust… daily. He is still hanging with Ps 46.10. Be still and know that I am God. One of the biggest things God has said to me is that I do not trust, I walk in fear, because I don’t truly KNOW Him…who He is…His attributes, His power, His tender love. If I did, I would not be afraid, I would not doubt. We have been learning this year about the tenderness of God towards us.  One of our biggest verses as a family has been Zephaniah 2:17 “For the Lord your God has arrived to live among you. He is a mighty savior. He will rejoice over you with great gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will exult over you by singing a happy song.”

On the Brenna front, she has had an enormous amount of growth this year, which of course goes without saying, that it has been a difficult year for her. As she continues to heal from the hurts from her past a beautiful young woman is emerging. It has been confirmed to hear heart that her calling and her gifting is with children. She has been working a lot with the children at both of our churches, especially Northwood. This summer she spent a lot of time taking care of Joe and doing volunteer work at TECH in all the departments, Administration, graphics, facilities Planning and Mechanics. She hopes to continue with training with Dan Larson, our part time mechanic this fall. Mechanics is one of her interests and a skill set she needs for the mission field.

I am going to stop this catch up blog here and break our further news up into other blog sets.

Thank you again for love and prayers and love and prayers…..and all your support

Teri

Joe's Hosptital BooBoo

I am so sorry that I am so behind the times. I got really overwhelmed there for a while.

As most of you know, Joe ended up back in the hospital in February. He got the flu really bad and became severely dehydrated. This caused his blood pressure to drop really low. We had called his doctor and told her that his pressure was very low and his pulse was running at about 38-40 beats per minute. She said, oh, that is normal for the flu.................. Go figure. The next night he began dry heaving and went out completely, as in his heart stopped and his eyes rolled up in his head. I could not get him out of his chair because of the angle it was at so I hit his chest really hard and shook and yelled at him and he came back. This happened three times before the ambulance came. Was very scary. Brenna and I spent the night with him in the Trauma unit at Good Shepard. They said the first chamber of his heart had quite beating. They got him stabilized finally and the next afternoon he was transferred to Shreveport VA where they brought his kidneys back into functioning and got him stabilized the rest of the way. The amazing thing is that he didn't suffer a heart attack through all of this.

Strangely enough this incident has finally settled Joe's fear of dying. Me on the other hand it put into a tail spin. Of course I am the one who suffers when he gets to go home to be with Jesus. All of this culminated in me hearing a message where the lady shared about how that when a sheep falls down it cannot get up, it is called a "cast" sheep. That is what it means when it says in the scriptures to "Cast your cares upon Me...." I have been practicing that lately and what a difference. I am almost human again. I had a physical collapse this last Sunday and slept the whole day practically and now I feel myself again.

This crazy weather has been so warm we have been eating dinner outside and I have been doing my morning bible study on our screen porch, in my shirt sleeves. We came home from church tonight and had to turn the air conditioner on because the house was up to 77 degrees. Crazy stuff. It has been like a gift from God to be outside during this time of sitting beside His still waters.

Love

Teri

Joe's Small Heart Attack

As many of you know, Joe had a small heart attack Wed night. That makes 8 in one year. Turns out that what we thought was his blood sugar going wacky for no reason and continuing to climb were really heart incidents so it seems that he has been having small ones for over a month. Now that we know the proper interpretations of his symptoms we should do better.

They considered doing a heart cath  but decided to try a few more changes in meds to see if we can stop these incidents. If it doesn't then they will do the heart cath and try to stint. There are a couple of places they might be able to put a stint in but they are highly risky places so we are trying to avoid that. 

They said they will still clear him to have the procedure to reduce the tumors in the bladder this month. 

Thank you for all your continuing prayer and love. they released Joe from the hospital Friday!!! Praise the Lord! How is that for a good Friday the 13th?! He is just a little week and still has a lot of fluid retention but is doing good. We actually all went out as a family to dinner to celebrate, then he came home and went to sleep :-)

Thank you all for all your prayers and encouragement and love!

Brenna is now looking at possibly working as a volunteer with special needs and hurting kids at a camp in Idaho this summer. She is very very excited. She continues to make necklaces to sell to help raise money for her missions trips. I will post some pictures real soon. Most of them she sells as fast as she can make them. 

I am doing pretty good, now that my hubby is home. Have been really busy at TECH. Worked over Christmas break to get the web update done that I was doing for Weaving Hope, a women's shelter ministry in Guatemala. You can check it out at weavinghopeministry.org  It still needs proofed but is 90% finished. Had a whole bunch of rush jobs right after the new year and then it slowed down right before Joe went into the Hospital. Gods timing is always perfect. 

Love 

TERI

Radically Radiant

Sooooooo

We went to Shreveport this past Tuesday so the Urologist could see how well the radiation had done at shrinking the tumors in Joe's bladder. Much to their surprise they were far smaller than they anticipated. Soo, this means that they are going to be able to go in through a cathetor and burn them down even smaller and clean out around the uretor so Joe's kidney can drain properly. We will be able to manage the cancer in this way from now on. No more radiation.

YAY!

PRAISE THE LORD!

Radiation Saturation

Dear Friends and Family:

Happy Joe

YAAAYYYYYY!!!!! Joe is all done with radiation! He tolerated it very well. He got very tired the last week and a half and was anxious for it to finish. He is still very tired and sleeps a lot of hours but is slowly recovering. They want to wait about a month before we do any tests and let his body calm down. In Dec (we don't have the date yet) he will go see the Urologist at the VA in Shreveport and they will take a look at the tumors through a scope to see how they are looking.

Tomorrow is our 19th anniversary. Last year I thought we had celebrated our last one together. Thank you God for giving us another year together, and hopefully a few more!

Here you see the beautiful necklace and 
earrings that Brenna made for me. 

We celebrated my birthday in October very quietly. We worked around the house all day getting things done I wanted done for a bunch of company we were having the next weekend. That evening we went to the international banquet at Hope Fellowship as part of our missions conference. It was really cool as we have a outreach to African Nationals here in Longview. We had a whole bunch of countries represented, 8 or 9 I think.

Recently I have made some new friends, Sharon, who is a musician and reviews books. We have lovely rambling conversations. And Joy who is also a musician and studying to be a teacher. Sharon has a 16 year old son who is one of Brennas best friends. Joy has a 16 year old daughter who is also a new friend of Brenna's. We are all going to a game night at Sharons next weekend.  It is funny all the musical people I am getting to know. Our life's seem to be surrounded by music any more.

This last weekend we had 1st Friday Coffee house on Friday. I ran it this time, under Molly's supervision, the December one I am in charge of by myself... well other people at Northwood will be helping, but Molly and Matt are gone for a month so I am heading it up. Saturday we went to a small concert at a private home for the Alaska String Band. They are a family of musicians and are extremely good. We got their two latest CDs and Joe has been listening to them almost non stop every since. Guess I need to get the rest of their music for him for Christmas.

Brenna also is still my darling babysitter of Eviline. What do you think? Brenna has gotten very involved with doing a Christmas program and preparing to go on a short missions trip to New Orleans over New Years. In the spring she is working on doing a short missions trip over spring break to an orphanage just across the border into mexico through Last Days Ministries, which is the one founded by Keith and Melody Green.

I am still staying very very busy at work. With Molly gone I am even more busy.

Thank you for all your love and prayers

Teri

Radiation and Celebrations

Dear Friends and Family...

Thought you all would like and update on what is going on with Joe. As you may know, he started radiation last Wed. So far he is having no ill effects from it. His blood sugars have been a bit crazy but the doctor said that isn't the radiation yet, it is probably just stress. He sees the radiation oncologists every Wed. He leaves every morning at 7:30 am and is back to work by 9:30 and works a few hours. It is looking unlikely that he will get any chemo because of his heart. The radiation will not kill the cancer by itself but it will shrink the tumors and make his life much longer and more comfortable.

We have gotten the first results of cat scans back. They show a 4.5 cm mass on outside of one kidney, which we don't know what it is yet. Hopefully it is not also cancer. The kidney and ureter are also swollen on one side. This is caused by one of the masses partly blocking one of the ureters. In the bladder there are multiple tumors, the largest are 5 cm and 5.8 cm.

The good news is that although we were told before that his heart is enlarged, it isn't. That is good news.

Two weekends ago Brenna and Teri participated in a PKD walkathon. Brenna dressed up as a fairy and did face painting on the kids. It was really nice.










The anniversary of Brenna's adoption happened in April. We wanted to do something special to celebrate but it is hard when Joe cannot do much physically. Well, this last Saturday we finally found something. We went to a wildlife drive through safari in Cherokee county, about 50 miles south of us. It was well worth the drive. We paid $15 per person and were each given a big bag of food pellets to feed the animals. They of course know that the car things have yummy food so most of them come hurrying over when they see a car. We drove around for well over 2 hours through this thing and saw most of the animals on the list. You have to be really careful because most of them will put their heads in the car if you let them and snatch anything in reach, your glasses, your hat, whatever.

There are two kinds of deer here,
I don't remember all the types

As you can see, he stuck his head in the car before we
could get the window up. This was a miniture donkey

Pretty, huh?

They came in herds and snuffled around for our pellets

Ether an emu or a rea. These dudes were really fast.
The window was going up really fast. 

The most agressive though were the zebras. Many of them
got their heads in the car. 

While I was snapping this one another one poked his head
around the corner and right into Brenna's lap