A New Report on Eileen

Last week we had another CT Scan. The results showed that the lesions on her liver were again, half the size they were at the last CT scan. So, it appears that the chemo is doing its job and the cancer is shrinking. Praise the Lord.

On the other hand, Eileen is feeling the tumor in her stomach more than before. Because the CT scan can’t see what’s going on with that, we are going to have another endoscopy next week to see what effect the chemo is having on the tumor. Pray that the doctor will be able to see what he needs to see and that he will have good news for us.

Eileen had her seventh chemo treatment yesterday (12 are planned). She is beginning to have difficulty maintaining high enough blood cell counts. She will be receiving shots to help her white blood cells recover before her next scheduled chemo treatment—February 1. Please pray that her counts will be high enough.

Overall, please continue to pray for full healing. The doctors are holding out no hope of Eileen’s recovering from this cancer. When the chemo treatments are finished, that’s all they have for us. We are going to visit Virginia Mason in Seattle on February 11 to see if they have any trials Eileen can be part of. So there is hope there. Pray that we would continue to trust in Jesus and shine his love on all those around us.

Eileen’s parents and sister came up from California for close to a week. We had a really good time with them. Eileen’s mother was able to cross several things off her bucket list while she was here. She had never experienced: snow falling gently from the sky, catching a snow flake on her tongue, and making a snow angel. She got to do it all…she’s 89. God is good.

Doug and Nancy came by a couple of weeks ago and gave us some good things to think about. One is that it is good to be served because if no one needed serving, no one would be able to serve. Being served is hard. But you all make it a joyous event and we are incredibly grateful to you all.

The second thing is that going to be with the Lord isn’t something to be sad about. At least not because of all the things you think you might miss. Heaven isn’t less than what we have here it is incredibly more than what we have here. We were sad that Eileen might not get to see Rachel get married, or that she might not get to dandle Rachel’s children on her knee. But when she gets to heaven, maybe she’ll get to do it even more there than here. There isn’t really there at all. In Hebrews, we read that we have a great cloud of witnesses watching us and cheering us on. They are all around us, experiencing our lives right along with us. I prefer to think of them as fans and spectators rather than witnesses. Fans and spectators are much more involved in the game than witnesses.

The Bible talks about heaven as being a beautiful place. The resurrection takes away it’s sting. The saints who have gone before us in history actually looked forward to dying and embraced it with joyful exuberance, partly because their lives here were so difficult, but also because they believed that life in the literal presence of God would be glorious and spectacularly wonderful.

So we purchased and are reading Heaven by Randy Alcorn. After all, when you plan a trip, you want to study where you’ll be going before you get there. Even if we don’t go there really soon, we’ll all be going there some day. It can’t hurt to be prepared early.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and your encouragement. We are much loved.