Dear friends,

I cannot tell you how much it means to us to know you are praying for me. Many have expressed their love & assured us of their prayers during these past weeks and it blesses us incredibly. As I told you it was difficult to receive the unexpectedly bad news about the cancer being aggressive (Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma). The doctor had explained we would be looking at just months, time wise…. and he has recommended weekly chemotherapy, stem cell therapy and quite possibly bone barrow transplant also. However having walked this road before I was more prepared to respond, so I explained we needed a few days to think and pray, which is what we did. Paul & I have both now returned home to Chiang Rai, where we love to be!

I wanted to share this part of the journey with you, so you know what is happening and can continue to pray with us. It was a pretty hard thing to hear this from the oncologist and we met with our Aussie pastors/friends (thanks Dave & Colleen) who reminded us that we had heard form God in the past and that we should seek Him and hear from Him again about this situation, that was the word of the Lord to us and we went away to ask God what He wanted to say to us. Right away, as I asked God to speak to me, I had the scripture that I had memorized when I was a teenager, running around in my head. It was like it was on replay and I could not think of anything else but Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you; to give you a future and a hope”. Needless to say, I was pretty stoked at God speaking this to me. Pretty much the opposite what the doctor had said that morning: just months, not a future… So I was immediately VERY encouraged. Those words lifted me up and came alive to me, I felt God pulled me up from a pit of despair and was carrying me. Everyday since God has continued to do this, through scriptures, Psalm 103 and so many other scriptures have ministered to me through this time. (I have written a bunch of them below for anyone who wants to read more.) God has restored my hope and I am very hopeful that I will not die yet. I have been challenged to take God at His word and would ask that you would pray for me too in this way. I hope that you also will join in my hope of health & strength.

Basically I am currently consuming almost every natural remedy known to man, (or it seems that way anyway) eating apricot kernels and cod liver oil, high doses of vitamin c and other supplements which I won’t bore you with. My hope is that these things will shrink the tumour and that when I go back to have any CT scan in a month (early August) we will see evidence of that. Ultimately though it is God who heals and we are asking Him to heal me and hopeful that this is His plan. We have prayed together as a family since we have come back from Australia (we are all together except Zac who is still in USA) and have a peace about this plan for now, once we get results from the next CT scan we will then decide what to do next. Paul & I will travel together again to Australia for that on July 30th. We appreciate you praying with us.

Caleb goes for more x-rays and his first follow-up appointment (since discharge) next Monday, 9th July in Bangkok. He is so much better, at that time we hope his plaster will come off and the pin might come out of his right foot.

We are blessed to have you as partners in our lives & ministry,
Paul & Penny