God Speeds up Life

Ok, it’s my fault I haven’t posted in a while, but let me fill you in. We had about 600 people at the funeral and ended up feeding about 500 of them. It was a moving service with her brother Dawson leading the singing and her other brother, Nolan, giving a short synopsis of her life. A good friend of our church, Keith Yates or affectionately known as “Bear,” shared two songs. Bear is blind and was rejected by his family as a baby and grew up in a bunch of homes. It was so neat, to see the joy on his face when he came to the last verse of looking forward to heaven, even after he struggled so much with his emotions the first few verses. My father brought a message on the fact the “Precious in the eyes of the Lord are the death of His saints!”
Click in the picture for a larger view.
Afterwards, the pall bearers loaded the casket into the back of our van for the trip out to the cemetery. It was a drive of almost 30 miles since we had to use the largest church in the area. We had contacted the police and they blocked traffic for the processional and the line was about a mile and a half long when we were all close together. I already shared about what our grave side services are like and won’t bored you with that again, but one thing that thrilled my heart, was to sing as a group, “Lift Your Glad Voices!” To see Val with his hand raised to heaven and singing with all his might was so overwhelming.

After Krystal’s passing, we had a week of recovery and rest. Then things kicked into high gear again. I had come to the realization that I needed a little more income to continue to meet our needs and plan for the future, so I started looking for a part time job. The Lord opened one up at a local quilt shop where I can work there two days a week and do the same things I have done for the last 8 years, talk to people and sell sewing machines.

Then to speed it up some more, we got our taxes done and thanked God that there was $2000 there to get our youngest sons eye fixed. For the last two months I have been looking into options for the surgery to move the muscle back on our sons eye. Here in Bemidji, they want $6000 to do the simple, out-patient surgery. I knew we would not have that much money so what do we do? First we prayed that God would give us wisdom to know what to do, and had an anointing. We contacted various hospitals around the area and found the price all about the same, so we tried Canada. They wouldn’t even touch him because we Americans can now sue Canadian doctors for malpractice and thus it is too expensive for them to have the insurance. I stated that we would be willing to sign a paper stating that we would not hold them liable, but he stated that it is our son they worry about. He, (the doctor) would have to carry American malpractice insurance until our ten-month-old son, turned 21. He asked why we didn’t do it in our area and when I told him the cost, he was shocked, “Why so much!!!!”

So we looked elsewhere. A few years ago we had been in Thailand and knew friends there and started looking into going there. There are a bunch of hospitals all set up to work with English speaking people who come there for the same reason, cheaper medical care. These hospitals are equipped just as good as and sometimes even better than our own, and the doctors are often trained here in America. The cost, $1000 - $1800. Add a $900 round trip plane ticket and you are looking at still saving over half the price. And so, after much prayer and talking with the hospital staff and a friend who also had eye surgery done there, we decided to go have it done in Thailand.

That brings me to today, the tickets are bought, plans are made, and Wayne and I leave tomorrow with another couple in our church for the trip over. We will be gone a little over two weeks and would appreciate you prayers for both me and Aimee as she takes care of the other children here at home.

I will be taking lots of pictures and might share some when I get back.