Category: Miscellaneous

First of all, thank you all so much for your kind comments and prayers. It means so much to us, and is so sweet of you all.

We were very surprised by the doctor’s words when he came out to tell us how the surgery went this morning: There was no tumor, and the ovaries were perfectly healthy! What had appeared as a tumor was the appendix. They said the appendix was as hard as a rock. It had shown up on the ultrasound as a solid mass next to the ovary. So, the doctor left the ovaries and removed the appendix. This was about the best news we could have heard — better than any of us expected! No tumor, no cancer, just an appendix removal! Mom is perfectly healthy. Praise God!

After the surgery, mom was very upbeat. [smile] We are now all celebrating, so grateful to the Lord for his undeserved goodness. Now we are all at home eating chicken noodle soup (along with mom).

Grateful For…

-The wonderful Christian doctor who performed the surgery.

-That even if we would have found out that mom had cancer, we are well cared by our Heavenly Father and it still would have all been okay (1 Peter 1).

-We had some very good talks with people we met in the waiting room and nurses! This made the morning extra special.

-We are grateful to friends who joined us at the hospital this morning — especially Deb and Nickie Biegler who have been battling cancer in their own family. Please pray for Nickie’s dad, Todd. They found out he had cancer last August. It has been a long difficult journey for their family. Please join us in lifting them to the Lord in prayer.

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High: To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning and Thy faithfulness every night” (Psalm 92:1-2).

Five days ago we learned that my mom has a walnut sized tumor on her ovary. Mom and Dad had an appointment with a Christian gynecologist this morning. We don’t know if the tumor is malignant, but since mom has had two aunts die of ovarian cancer, and it is sometimes hereditary, we want to take care of this right away.

However, there are several pieces of good news:

-They scheduled surgery for this Thursday. Apparently the receptionist worked for about 45 minutes to get the appointment scheduled so soon–coordinating two doctors, the hospital, and the anesthesiologist. My mom was so happy that she was able to schedule it so soon, she gave the receptionist a big hug. [smile] She explained how it was an answer to prayer.

-Dad said that Mom was witnessing to everyone in the waiting room. Mom and Dad both have been quite the evangelists with all the people they are encountering. In fact, most of supper tonight was spent listening to their stories. Praise the Lord for that!

The surgery will be this Thursday (March 1st) at 7:30 am. Thank you for praying.

Dad’s verse of the day today: “Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice! Have mercy also upon me, and answer me” (Psalm 27:7).

Things have been busy around here! The current big project is finishing the book on witnessing which I have been working on. The title is “Will Our Generation Speak? A Call to Be Bold with the Gospel.”

Sarah has been working full time with me on the book for most of the winter. I have no idea how I would be doing this project without her. I took this picture the other day as her desk was full of books while she spent the afternoon looking up some mission statistics for me for chapter sixteen.

We are in a race to the finish line now, and Mom has been helping us maximize work hours by bringing supper over to our office so we don’t have to take the time to go home for it. She also takes care of everything at home … she does so much.

Nickie and Bekah keep the Bright Lights ministry running, while also helping with the production of new materials … Bekah just finished a study guide for Before You Meet Prince Charming (which Nickie edited and laid out in InDesign) and Nickie has been spending many hours putting the cartoons for my book into InDesign and adding the captions.

Stephen … lol … is happy that he just finished doing our taxes.

Grandpa lightens the load for everyone by working in the basement four mornings a week, preparing materials for upcoming conferences. He recently showed me his long list of materials to pack for our first home school conference trip to SC next month. Grandpa also keeps our basement “warehouse” packaging area very well organized. We really appreciate him!

Andrew has been editing video from the Strong in the Lord Conferences. It’s a big job and video editing can be very tedious.

My dad has been putting many, many hours into drawing cartoons for my book. Since our little “cartoon pizza party” we had last fall to brainstorm for ideas we’ve come a long way … [smile] … and Dad has been doing such a great job.

More reports coming soon. For now, we’d appreciate prayer about this book, that the Lord would use it mightily in our generation.

All of us girls at the Bright Lights office started out the day at the coffee shop next door to celebrate with Sarah, whose birthday was yesterday. Things are going well with us. We have been consumed with lots of writing, editing, and planning for the coming year.

“And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:9)

Two nights ago, we saw many answers to prayer in regard to our church’s Thanksgiving dinner outreach. We had about sixteen International students join us! Students at this table were from Malaysia and Taiwan.

Students at this table came from Germany, France, Spain and Sweden.

After the meal we had special music, singing, a slideshow of pictures and Mr. Woodhouse gave a terrific message about the founding of our nation — with a very clear gospel presentation.

“Most young people in Europe don’t really care about religion,” the European students told me over dinner, explaining how empty the large church buildings are on Sunday mornings. I acknowledged I had heard similar reports.

“I think one reason for that is evolutionary teaching,” I told them, “Because if people believe that they evolved, and science has disproven the Bible, how can they really believe it?”

“I was taught evolution, but I don’t see a contradiction between evolution and the Bible,” one of them said. “I just take the beginning of Genesis metaphorically.”

I explained how many Christians who are also scientists teach how the Bible and science are consistent. I told them how we run a bookstore in town that carries about 350 titles of these kind of books. (Books on creation science in every area of science and on every level, from first grade to PhD.), explaining that “We (Creationists) look at the same evidence as evolutionists do, but come to different conclusions because we start with different presuppositions. For example, we believe Noah’s flood explains a lot of things — like canyons. People who believe the earth is millions of years old believe that canyons formed over long periods of time. But we believe they happened quickly by the huge amount of water during the flood.”

The surprised, skeptical look on his face told me these were sort of new and different ideas to him, yet he seemed intrigued that I held this view.

“So you really take the whole Bible literally?” he asked.

“Yeah!” I said.

“I’ve heard that there were people like you in America but I’ve never met one,” he replied.

[smile]

“So…how old is the earth?” he asked.

I laughed, anticipating his reaction to my answer. “About six thousand years,” I said.

Understandably, this was somewhat surprising for him.

I didn’t really want to talk about origins the whole time, so I stressed the importance of the gospel (the cross and resurrection) but I asked, “How can one believe the end of the Bible if they can’t believe the beginning?”

“Yeah, I’ve wondered that before,” he said, “Like about the contradictions in Scripture.”

I mentioned how it’s true that people claim there are contradictions, but I’ve never been shown a contradiction that was a true contradiction. They always have answers and explanations.

Though it was obvious these comments were all new to him, he was nice and he definitely seemed like a thinker.

Some friends and I met these girls from Vietnam while talking with students on their campus a few weeks ago. I was then able to attend a presentation on Vietnam they taught last week — and then they came to the Thanksgiving dinner.

If you still have room at your Thanksgiving dinner in your home or at your church, consider inviting some international students. They are grateful for the opportunity to learn about American culture while they are here, and Thanksgiving is a perfect open door for this. (Christmas is too!)

We were able to have an e-mail invite sent to all the international students at our local college, and I assume something similar could be done at any college. Even though many of the students had never met us before, they seemed eager to come and expressed how much they enjoyed the evening.