Steve & Monica

FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2008 09:33 AM, CDT
"HE FASHIONS HEARTS INDIVIDUALLY" Psalm 33:15
As I was sitting next to my sweet husband in church last weekend, we were praying about healing. It was a phenomenal healing service. Pastor Wendell from Seattle is a powerful evangelist. God gave Steve a "word" (or 3 if you are counting). "THERE IS MORE". He wrote it down at the top of his notebook. We didn't understand the full impact of those words until yesterday. James 5 : 14-15 "Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up"Steve and I always pray for discernment and wisdom. Even more since we have had some major decisions to make. Many times in conversation, we have both stated that we didn't feel that God was leading us to a transplant, at least not right now. We both wanted to be sure that this wasn't just our living in fear of a major open heart surgery. So in my prayer time with God, I asked him to take away any fear that the enemy might try to throw at us and allow us to have a clear word from HIM. We had not met with our surgeon since we were released from the hospital. Every week, we meet with the mechanical heart engineers. They mentioned several times that the goal was to get the pulmonary pressures tested and as soon as they are down, get Steve on the transplant list. Steve and I would leave and talk about how we felt that we needed to not rush into that. For me, it might have been a bit of selfishness, in that, I wanted for us to get home to Boise so we could get back to some normalcy, and spend time with Trevor, and regroup before we headed into yet another major surgery. Was this God's will, or Monica's will?? I really needed to pray hard about this because I didn't want to leave a minute too soon to be sure that Steve had recovered enough to really go home. Our answer came yesterday, as we sat in the office with Dr. Icenogle. The first words to come out of his mouth were "So, when are you going to go home and go back to work?" He is very happy with how well Steve is doing. (we are at the gym nearly every day). He went on to say that we need to get his pulmonary pressures checked (the plan is to do that is Sept). The next sentence was hard to hear... "With the type of antibodies that you have, and because of the way your body responded to the transfusions that you had during and after surgery, the chances of us transplanting you is 3%." We sat in silence for a few minutes just trying to soak all of it in. He went on to explain all of it, and how we could try to "wash" Steve's blood, but there's a huge possibility that the "memory" in his cells will again react negatively. 3%.... well.... I guess the morning that Peter woke up before he met Jesus outside of the boat and walked on water... he probably would have thought he had a 0% chance of that happening. But, it happened. It wasn't until Peter started looking around at the storm around him that he started to sink. The lesson in that, is that we have to keep focused on HIM. They tell us that the heart pump can last for around 3 - 5 years, and it can be replaced. The blessing in this is..... had we gone ahead with a transplant a month and 1/2 ago, his body would most likely have rejected the heart. Thank You God!!! The other blessing is that... our surgeon and the 2 engineers who were in the room with us yesterday are all believers. Dr. Ice says, we just have to keep praying. In our devotions we read about a woman in a nursing home who asked a visiting pastor to pray for her. She then asked the pastor "would you help me out of this wheelchair?" He was startled, but he did as she asked. She took a few steps and then started running and jumping till the whole building heard her. Later in his car the pastor looked up and said, "Lord, don't ever do that to me again!" The Bible says, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick." So, why are we surprised when HE does? Thank you for your continued prayers. We get to go home soon... and be with Trevor, and our church, and our own bed. God answers prayers. We don't understand where He is taking us sometimes, but "BLESS THE LORD, OH MY SOUL"... He NEVER leaves us!!! And we all know that: "THERE IS MORE"!!Be Blessed,Love Coach and Mon

Well, above is the email from Monica today. Good news they are coming home right? I just can't help but feel emotional for them right now, I'm not sure exactly why. Healing is happening with Steve and we are all glad that he will be home and they will have some sort of "normalcy" as they say; so why the sadness? I guess I was just praying for complete healing meaning a transplant and yet why do I think he is any thing but complete now? If our Lord says he is complete as is then who am I to question?! So, I guess we are moving on and going to be welcoming them home soon! We love you guys and have missed you!

I also want to ask for prayers for our kiddos in ET. We have no information on them, we have never met them, we have never seen them but oh how my heart is hurting for them so much right now. I don't know the circumstances but please just pray (as for all the "least of these"). We are hoping to be hearing something in Sept. or maybe Oct. We will of course let you know ASAP!!!