PRAY FOR JAMES' SURGERY

We received this letter from Kent and Sharla about James' surgery scheduled for Thanksgiving day!
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Just wanted to ask you to be praying for James’ surgery tomorrow morning……….8:00 our time. It will be a 2-3 hour out-patient surgery on his inner ear. He has had an incurable infection that almost goes away but then comes back, for some time………and, it “might” be some of the reason we have been seeing a rash of seizures over the last month. When we got James 11 years ago his ears were full of a long-time infection and we had 2 surgeries placing tubes in his ears during the years, along with ongoing infections and eardrums bursting. This right ear was the worst and the drum is very thin from the many ruptures and now has developed a hole that does not want to heal……….which allows infection to begin all the more easier. Plus the eardrum has sucked in further than it should be due to being weak.

So, they will go in from behind his ear, clean out all the infection of the ear cavity and the porous bone behind the ear, review the condition of the 3 little bones, and graft some tissue over his eardrum, sealing the hole. We chose Thanksgiving day so he will hopefully be ready for school by Monday. There are some risks of nerves that feed the vision and taste buds in his mouth………plus, just the general anesthetic concerns. We had to cut his hair short today so we could razor an area around his ear…………so he looks like a real Indian……..thankfully he said he didn’t like it and will be glad when his hair grows back after the surgery.

Thank you for all your prayers for his rapid recovery and the end to a long battle with this ear problem. God be praised, last time we checked his hearing a few years ago he still had about 85% of his natural hearing……….I think he has me beat.

Kent………and Sharla

PRAY FOR JENNIFER, JEFF, MARY, BARNEY, AND FAMILY

We received this letter to the family today from Barney.
Jennifer and Jeff...Mary and Barney...entire family, we are praying for you!


It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today. Less than 24 hours ago Jennifer went to a routine OB appointment (26 weeks) and they were unable to hear a heartbeat. An ultrasound confirmed fetal demise and she was induced last night delivering a perfectly formed 2 lb 1 ounce baby girl.

We are doing additional testing to find a cause for her intrauterine death, including genetics, but of course that may take many weeks. What we need now is the strength of your prayers. I pray that we can endure this. I know that God has prepared a place for us that is more than we can hope or imagine—my imagination just went through the roof. I know that God is down here with His sleeves rolled up helping us with our problems and with His infinite wisdom knows best, but I still wanted to try to spoil little Madison here on earth.

Jennifer and Jeff have gone home to rest. I am going to go back to work on Friday, if I can stop bawling.

Richly blest, but incredibly sad,

Barney