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