Walk with me as I "Follow the Fish"...JESUS!!!

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It's been a tough year for us with my mom being sick and Michael having a long distant relationship...we felt it was time for a "Family" vacation!!! We were suppose to be going to Louisiana during the time that we had scheduled off but Michael and Allison were having some problems (they have since broken up). A year ago when we thought this might be our last summer vacation with Michael we all sat down and decided that we would like to go to a "Dude" ranch. When all the Louisiana stuff fell through...we picked right back up on that research from a year ago and called the Horseshoe Canyon Dude Ranch in Jasper, AR. (www.gohcr.com) After we showed up we were quite shocked that the owners and most ranch hands were Mormon...we ministered the best we could and decided to "enjoy" our vacation. God sure does have a sense of humor sending us to another Mission field on our vacation!!! :-) We started out our first day with each of us riding horses (one of the on...

We were blessed to be able to go on another mission trip with JOY FM the Christian radio station in St. Louis again this year. Larry, Heather and I went to Trinidad (Michael went to Mexico in June). Trinidad is 7 miles north of Venezuela and is considered a Caribbean Island. Their primary religions there are Muslim, Hindu and Christian. There were 50 of us who went and Heather found her long lost sister - Hadassah in Trinidad. It's a place I would love to go back to...the people are so lost! I have never seen an "idol god" before...wow - this island has some MAJOR darkness! We ministered to so many different people and kids...Larry was sick most of the time from the dust and mold in the stage that our team replaced but he made it through.

On March 27, my mom was diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma (lung cancer from second hand cigarette smoke that is very fast growing and spreads very quickly). On March 30, she underwent a PET scan that showed the spot on the lung and a spot on her right hip bone. April 11, she had a bone biopsy of the right hip which came back negative for cancer. On April 22, I was prompted by the Holy Spirit to begin a 40 day fast (April 22-May 31) for my mom's healing. In April, I didn't understand or even realize at the time the extent of all of this as at that time my mom was undergoing lung surgery on April 25 to remove 40% of her right lung. When they removed the portion of her lung they found the tumor to be 3.2 cm and they also removed 4 lymph nodes in that area, 2 of the lymph nodes were cancerous but 2 of them were not. Therefore, they were going to do 4 bouts of Chemo (1 every 21 days) as a precautionary measure. After my mom's first round of Chemo she began sleeping more and still lo...

Well - it's been a while since I've written anything but I'm not sure it matters cause I don't think anyone reads this besides me anyway. Oh well...on with the blog. In February my mom felt like she had pneumonia. I wanted her to go to the ER to get checked out but she refused telling me that she'd call the doctor the next day and get herself a doctors appointment. She called on February 6 and got an appointment for February 7. The doctor did a chest x-ray and discovered that my mom did in fact have pneumonia...having had it before in 2003...I guess it was fairly easy for my mom to detect. Unfortunately, something else showed up on that x-ray that the doctor was concerned about but didn't want to worry us with until they knew more so she put my mom on antibiotics and waited 2 weeks. She then wanted my mom to go have a CT scan of her lungs...my mom HATES CT scans but went along with the doctors request...unfortunately, the CT scan showed the same thing as the f...

WOW - What a week!!! Our God is SO Good!!! We had GREAT weather all week too!!! At the last minute, H and I were invited to go FREE of charge, except our evening meals and God even provided those for us...H and I got to go on this trip with our family for FREE!!! I knew...it was Gods plan! We had wanted to go all along but couldn't afford for all of us to go...I had said since July that if God wanted us there...he'd provide a way for us to be there...God is SO good!!! We started out the week leaving the day after Christmas on a tour bus for a 22 hour ride to Brownsville, Tx. We DID eventually arrive! Thank you Lord!!! We were looking so forward to being able to see our Mexican friends again...H was excited to see Esli again and as you see...their friendship has continued! We did a prayer walk after we arrived on Wednesday the 27th heading over to the clinic that we helped to build when we were there in July...it was GREAT to see the progress that had been made on it...