To God be the Glory!!! He saw fit to bring Dondon back several times from the brink of
death while others around him in ICU died. On Sunday, June 10th, Nayumi and Dondon finally were able to go home to Tumpagon. Nayumi asked us to please thank the many brothers and sisters
from other lands who they don’t even know, who prayed for Dondon.
She said it moves her and Dondon to tears when they think of you and they
praise God for your prayers which got them through this terrible time.
We see Dondon’s recovery as God’s direct
intervention. We prayed in faith beside his bed when he was close to death and
hooked up to machines and God kept him alive and let Nayumi and us as a whole
family, have Dondon still here with us! We know that your prayers came pouring
in before God’s throne and that He heard your prayers and allowed each of you
to partner with Him in the miracle of Dondon’s still being with us with a few
more miles to go in this life. Isn’t it an amazing privilege that God gives us,
that we can work in partnership with Him?!
For the next few months the doctors have
said that Dondon is to totally rest – not even to climb stairs - so that no
strain is put on his heart as he is still weak, so please continue to pray for
day by day strengthening and for restoration of strong heart function for him.
This is just a short update to let you
know this wonderful news and we give all the glory to our LORD who is our
healer. Exodus 15:26
Big news for us this week is that we are now printing
the updated version of the Tala-Andig scriptures which now has over 52% of the
Tala-Andig New Testament completed as well as some maps and a Glossary!!
These New Testaments have been greatly desired and are
very, very precious to the readers here and they include the completed books of
Mark, Luke, Acts, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and
James as well as portions from the Old Testament, good sized portions of
Matthew and John and some from 1 Timothy, Hebrews and
1 Peter!
We are thrilled and really praising the Lord as you
can imagine!!!!!
Our printers are running hot in the office and it is
all hands on deck as we print and bind these partial New Testaments.
Distribution of these have begun already and will
continue for the next weeks and months.
We are using A4 size paper for now with a cardboard
cover which then slips firmly into hard covers which we bought for these copies
of the partial New Testaments. This works good for now until we are ready to
print the whole New Testament when they will be printed professionally.
In the above picture you can see Nanah holding up the
copy that she has just finished binding. It is now ready to be put into the
hands of someone who is waiting for their own book of all the Tala-Andig
scriptures that have been translated to date! You can see
the stack of printed Tala-Andig partial New Testaments that Nanah has completed
binding this morning.
These scriptures will bear much fruit as God has said:
“So shall my word
be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it
shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto
I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11 KJV)
All of this work involves a big team effort and one of
our translation team members who has a huge part in the process is Nanah (in
the above picture) who is a very gifted editor and checker and who has helped us
with almost every chapter so far of the TA translation. Also key players in the
team are Ann-ann, Jie-jie, Lalin and recently Benjie and there are others as
well. Please pray for this invaluable team!!!
Thank you so much for your prayers and please
specifically pray for strength and grace for us to keep persevering and to
constantly remember and practise God’s presence with us, especially through the
times when we are getting battered and thrown about in spiritual storms.
We praise the Lord for our translation team and we also praise Him for coffee breaks!
Before we bring you an update about
Dondon – who is still with us but in critical condition – we first want to
thank you so, so much for praying with us and for the many emails that have
flooded our inbox and that have brought such encouragement and help to us.
Dondon is still in ICU. The family are
taking turns watching him so that each one gets a rest. Yesterday morning he
was being watched and cared for by Nayumi and Jubab. Nayumi taught Jubab how to
rub his back and help him through attacks of nausea and pain that spikes from
his chest into his back.
We finally got the results of his tests
back and they show that he has Dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the
heart has become weakened and enlarged, and it cannot pump blood efficiently.
The Doctors believe that the cause of this was most likely myocarditis. His
heart is only pumping at 38% of normal function and so he is very weak and
finding it hard to breath at times and his heart is about 5 times normal size.
He is on medications which hopefully
will help to take some of the load off of his heart, stabilize his blood
pressure and prevent clots from developing. There was a time yesterday when his
blood pressure reached dangerously low and Dondon felt a terrible weakness and
like he was losing consciousness. He improved slightly after the doctors in ICU
initialized an IV med to help bring his BP back up.
There are some good signs though, like
you can see from this photo that he is lying flat. This was something he wasn’t
able to do a few days ago because of fluid in his lungs, and he had to stay
propped up. But now the medication is starting to help his heart pump slightly
better and get rid of the fluid build-up. Another good sign is that his vision
is clear, and he can sometimes swallow a couple of spoonfuls of soft food.
Another good sign on Tuesday night was that he mustered up the energy to crack
a small joke with Jubab when we arrived at the hospital, saying, “Hey brother,
we can’t play any games together in here can we?”
We are back in Lapoc today after
spending a night and a day out at the hospital helping the family. The roads
are bad, sometimes impassable right now as trucks are getting bogged and blocking
the road. Late Tuesday afternoon, after hearing that Dondon was deteriorating
and very weak, we had quite an anxious trip out to the hospital, getting thrown
around a bit on the torn up road and at one point getting totally stuck in a
bog. Using the last bit of light left before nightfall, we had pulled ourselves
out by hooking the winch onto a nearby bogged truck and thankfully,
miraculously God helped us to get out and on our way again.
Something a bit amusing was that you
have to wear special shoes to go into ICU but there were none big enough for
Paul so he had to wear things like disposable shower-caps over his flip-flops,
never mind the mud splashed on his legs from trying to get us out of the bog
which we hadn’t been able to wash off yet.
Please pray that in the next couple of
days Dondon’s blood pressure will stabilize, that the pumping function of his
heart will start working better and most of all PLEASE PRAY FOR A MIRACLE: that
he will have complete recovery and that his heart will return to being a
normal, healthy heart. The cardiologist says this is possible but that he has
to totally rest for 6 months and this is going to be hugely hard for a newly
married young man who has been active all his life. Pray that he will accept
this season in his life with grace and contentment and just rest in our Lord’s
loving embrace. This next six months is going to be a journey for Dondon and
Nayumi and for our whole family.
Dondon is the brother who used to rock
Jubab’s cradle when he was only 7 and Jubab was newborn, and he’s the brother
who was always good for a wrestle or a fun game. We love him very much and
don’t want to lose him but he is the Lord’s and we just wait for God’s plan for
him which we know are good plans and not plans to harm him.
God saved him from dying of accidental
poisoning when he was 3, and God helped him to grow even though he had a
problem growing as a child. Now we are asking God for another miracle.
This was our last look at him yesterday
noon before we left ICU to come back up here to Lapoc. He was sleeping
peacefully. If we don’t send you much news on Dondon for awhile, you’ll know
that he is still here with us, not gone home to heaven yet, but he will need
much prayer over these next months if you could please pray with us over this
length of time.
Please pray for Dondon, the middle brother of the five
brothers. He is Jubab’s fun-loving, optimist, great with kids, easy-going and always smiling brother but right now he
is desperately fighting for his life in the ICU of one of the biggest hospitals in Cagayan with what seems to be
viral myocarditis.
He got sick on May 14th with what appeared
to be a respiratory infection with slight fever and cough, but by the 19th, when the family came here to visit us for the weekend,
he was starting to get worse and by the 21st had to be taken to hospital where his condition has continued to
deteriorate until during the weekend he was moved to ICU.
He is having severe pain attacks in his chest, his
heart is swollen and he is having difficulty breathing. Nayumi, his beautiful young wife, who he married 8
months ago, (photo above) has not left his side or hardly slept for the past days. We were there on Saturday and he was
hooked up to IV’s and oxygen and was looking really pale and felt clammy, although he still managed to give us one
of his bright, Dondon style smiles.
The doctors are doing all they can but his condition
looks very, very serious.
Please, please take time if you will
to PRAY for him.
Dondon, 20 years old, waiting for his wedding to start.
Sometimes we find ourselves on a roller coaster ride of emotions living out so many different situations both
with our own family and with our extended family in the Lord. And this
last 2 ½ weeks has been like this.
Two and a half weeks ago, our emotions
were of joy, excitement and thankfulness as we celebrated Paul’s half a century
of life – his jubilee year - and it was a beautiful celebration which started
with a dawn birthday surprise pig (the pig was the breakfast) with a lot of
friends and neighbors who woke Paul up at dawn with coffee, soup and
singing.....and ended with a quick family trip to Manila to for a few days
together.
This was Paul’s dawn
birthday celebration
with about 70 +
neighbors and friends.
This was on April 29,
at our family birthday
dinner in Manila.
From these happy emotions we were
plunged just two evenings later into the depths of tragedy and sadness. Maybe
you remember last year, in one of our February 2011 blogs, that we wrote about
Mark and Aysa losing their baby at birth. They got through this difficult time
– accepted this from the hand of the Lord, kept their faith and kept serving
Him. Earlier this year – on March 10 – God gave them another beautiful
baby boy, Marten (for March 10) and their joy knew no bounds! All of us
rejoiced with them.
This is our precious friend Aysa on
baby Marten’s second Sunday at church.
But the tragedy happened last week
on Monday night the 7th of
May. God took
Marten’s life back with a sudden attack
of
what was either asthma or maybe a
problem with his heart.
Our hearts felt like they were being
wrenched out
of our bodies while we gathered around
Mark and Aysa
and listened to their agonized sobs and
wept with them.
And while the believers gathered
together to help bury the body of this precious little baby boy, another family
in the church here began their journey of grief as the Lord took our brother
Kukuy Bagas, one of the bible teachers, home to be with Himself after a 6 month
battle with liver cancer. So we’ve gone through two deaths in the church family
here and it has been a time of great sadness.
While still reeling under this sadness,
God blessed our church family here with last Saturday with a time to rejoice
through the recognition and laying of hands on two new elders in the church of
Colawingon. This five year old church plant has been done by the group effort
of many of the bible teachers - even Kukuy Bagas had a part - but one who has
had perhaps the greater part in the church planting effort is Ronnie Hanginan,
one of the elders from the Lapoc Church. So in the midst of celebration, in the
midst of tragedy and death and in the midst of the church leadership being
raised up..........Christ’s body here in the Lapoc area continue in the faith
and continue glorifying Him.
