Spring is Coming 3-29-06

Praying Friends,

The snow is starting to melt. The days are getting longer. The days are getting warmer. In the cycle of "Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, Road Construction" (known elsewhere as Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer) we are getting out of the Winter.

Praise! We have a new vehicle. A dear church in Washington State heard about the transmission going out on our van and presented Cassie and I with a check before we left Seattle to fix that transmission. Well, to that was added a gift from someone in our home Church here in Alaska (Peninsula grace Brethren Church, Soldotna) and we were able to "fix that van - - fix it good." I got $600 on trade in and we were able to pick up a 4-door sedan with only 53,000 miles on it for about $3500.

What's funny is the joy and jubilation expressed among various friends when we told him the van had gone to that junk yard in the sky. It seems we had developed a reputation for pushing the laws of physics with that vehicle, and there was a collective sigh of relief when we were able to rid ourselves of it.

Kris and I are both going thru Paul Hegstrom's Life Skills course here locally. It takes quite a commitment. The course is 26 weeks. Men and women are in separate classes and the men decided early on to meet TWICE a week. That's a total of 6 hours a week for me, 3 hours for Kris. But we are both enjoying it. Basically, Life Skills deals with the concept of arrested development, ways of identifying, coping, and re-training your brain to think differently. It focuses in on the difference between Shame (I am no good) and Guilt (I did something wrong). It is a good companion to the SALTS training we went thru a couple years ago.

I just had to get this far without mentioning Cassie because we want you to know that everything going on with Cassie is set in the framework of LIFE, and "the stuff of ministry" continues.

But Cassie's situation still overshadows everything. We still have not got words on the latest MRI from Seattle. The neurologist in Anchorage is having Cassie try out the two medications left to try. The idea is that no seizures with medication is better than the alternative of a second surgery. We have no problem with that. But it means having to "live" in a place I would not want anyone to have to live. At this point, the meds don;t seem to be making any difference . . . but we are not at that "therapeutic level" yet. To be frank, it's driving us nuts. Cassie fights a good fight, but as she sang in church this last week, "This Warrior is still a Child."

I will be going by the High School today and formerly withdrawing her from classes again, and she will be re-enrolled in the Public School's home school program, Connections. Normally, it would be too late to get her in, but they have made some wonderful allowances for Cassie.

The last time she was in Connections. back in the months before her first surgery, it didn't go to well. The meds made things sort of "foggy" and she had ha hard time. So, please pray with us that she will do well.

In the mean time, we wait.

Thanks for praying.

Gary & Kris

Blog-Only Administrative Comment

Friends,

I had a dear friend who reads our blog but doesn't get our e-mail updates point out to me that the blog wasn;t getting updated properly. He was right.

When I send out an update, a copy of it is supposed to get posted here on this blog. But it appears that that mechinism is "broken" I will look into it.

I just re-posted the 2/25 update to the blog this morning and "forced it" back to 2/25/06. I will keep a better ey on this in the future. Sorry about any confusion this caused.

Gary