Dear Friends and Family,
We can’t believe it has been over a year since Colby was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and just a month short of a year since his surgery! Praise the Lord for His faithfulness and healing!
Our updates have become less frequent, but it’s not for any lack of news or adventure! In fact, our lives are so full that we can only hope we are able to keep up with all that God is doing in, around, and through us. We hope that your days have been filled with abundant blessings since we last wrote you in February. Perhaps the easiest way to catch up is to start with a “brief” list of the joys and trials we’ve enjoyed over the last 5 months. Make sure you make it to the end, because that is where the most exciting news is!
- Colby continues to tolerate his monthly chemotherapy cycles. The worst (only?) side effect has been constipation during those weeks. He has been doing some osteopathic belly manipulation (thanks to a great friend who taught us some D.O. tricks!), which has made that a little bit more bearable :) (yes, he did try all sorts of other remedies without success). He continues to have absolutely no physical or mental limitations and has passed multiple rounds of neurocognitive testing without any difficulty. His MRI scans every 2 months have continued to be reassuring, and we hope to hear the same or better news when he has another MRI next Friday. Please pray with us about that. We feel like God is doing a special healing work now, and we are excited to see the results! More on that later…
- SiSi, our au pair, was baptized on Easter Sunday at her home church and continues to grow in her faith daily. She is such a blessing to us.
- SiSi plans to go back to China when her year commitment with our family finishes. We are praying and searching for a new au pair, though we know SiSi will be irreplaceable.
- We took a roadtrip to remember in April. We began with a stop in El Paso, TX to see Colby’s 92 year old Grandma Mac and his aunt and uncle. We then drove through the desert, headed to the Pacific Ocean and ended up in San Diego where Colby had an academic meeting to attend. We also spent some sweet time with Emily’s cousin and her family while we were there. We headed home through the mountains with an overnight stop at the Grand Canyon to watch the sun set and rise over one of the most incredible sites we’ve ever seen. Then we headed back to Oklahoma City and started working 7 hours later, as if nothing ever happened!
- We camped at Mt Magazine State Park in AR with Emily’s brother, sister in law, and parents. It was SiSi’s and Emily’s parents’ first time in a tent on US soil. They survived not just one night of car camping but two!!
- We just returned in early June from a 10-day mission trip with the OU CMDA to Peru. The whole family went, including SiSi and Jireh. We saw around 2800 patients as a team and best of all experienced the spiritual fruit of seeing many trust in Christ as their Savior.
- Jireh turned 3 on June 22. She is such a joy and is learning about the world around her with a passion that we wish we still had ourselves!
- We have discovered a local Christian coffee shop and ministry called the Credo House (www.credohouse.org), which is so much more than a coffee shop. It is a ministry with a desire to “make theology accessible” to people who have never had the opportunity to go to seminary. The brain food we get weekly from their teaching is wonderfully engaging and stimulating.
- Colby’s greatest challenge over the last year has been finding satisfaction in his daily work. We are overjoyed to tell you that some doors are opening that may finally free him up to practice and teach like he feels he is meant to do. God is graciously providing even in the comparatively small things. Thank you to all those who have prayed for us in this area.
So what could be more exciting than those things? Something for which we have been waiting almost 2 years! We will be traveling to Taiwan next month to pick up our adopted son! We finally have our “gotcha day,” which is the first day we will actually meet our son. Jireh will finally get to hug her didi (little brother) on August 20th! He will be 21 months old when we finally get him. We will spend 2 weeks in Taiwan, then allow plenty of time to bond with him once we return home before going back to work.
Many people have asked, “What’s his name?” He was given a Chinese name at birth, which we will keep in some form, but we want to give him a name that comes from us as well. Though we will make the final decision if the name fits when we meet him, we have decided we will call him Rapha. Sound strange…like Jireh? It’s because both names are Hebrew, from memorial names for God in the Old Testament of the Bible.
Jireh means “Provider” from Genesis 22:14 where Abraham renamed a mountain “The LORD will provide” (Jehova Jireh) after God provided a ram to be sacrificed and spared his son Isaac. This name given to our firstborn reminds us that without the Lord’s provision we could not have had children at all.
Rapha means “Healer.” God gives himself this name in Exodus 15:26, when he says “for I am the LORD, your healer” (Jehova Rapha). I’m sure we don’t need to describe how meaningful this name for our God is during this time in our lives. However, not only the name, but also the story surrounding it has blessed us and we would like to share that with you.
Here, as in many places in the Old Testament, the experiences of the nation of Israel become an allegory of instruction for the Christian life. The people of Israel had just escaped from Egypt and miraculously come through the Red Sea on dry ground. God then led them through the desert wilderness for 3 days without water before they finally reached a spring. Unfortunately the water was undrinkable, and they called it “Marah” meaning bitter.
Now imagine your disappointment. Just three days before you were walking on dry ground with the waters of the Red sea like towering endless walls of glass on either side of you. So much water that when it returned to its place, it covered and drowned the entire army of Egypt. Then following the same God who commanded the waters to part, you are led for 3 days in the desert with no water at all only to arrive at a spring of bitterness. What was God doing? Did He make a mistake? Would you have grumbled against God or trusted Him?
The people of Israel grumbled, Moses prayed, and God provided. He used the most unpredictable thing to make the water “sweet” and drinkable--wood. He showed Moses a “log” and made the water “sweet” when Moses threw it into the water. This gives us a beautiful picture of the way the wooden cross of Christ would one day make bitter lives sweet for those who trust in the sacrifice made on it.
After that the scripture says: “There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, ‘If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer” (Ex 15:25b-26).
Not only was God’s leading them to Marah not a mistake, it was for a good and loving purpose. God wanted to show them more of who He is, as “the LORD, your healer.” So what did God want from them? He talks about keeping commandments and statutes and doing right, but at that point in their nationhood they had not yet been given any of the laws of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, the 10 Commandments, or any written scriptures (that we know of). They had only the words of God spoken through Moses and Aaron and the stories of their forefathers passed down from generation to generation.
I think the statute can be summarized well by the first instruction He gives, to “diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God.” They had the words of God through Moses, and we have the words of God in the 66 book canon of Scripture that we rightly call “the Word of God” or the Bible. They--and we--are to listen, trust, and obey that which we hear from God. When we trust Him and in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross of wood, He will restore and heal in us that which is bitter or broken because that is who he is, “the LORD, your healer.” He heals because He gets glory through it.
We have to confess that over the last year we have not fully trusted God in every detail, and we have occasionally caught ourselves grumbling like the people of Israel did. However, we know that He is Jehova Rapha, and that he has brought us to this spring of bitterness for a good and loving purpose. He has and will continue to show himself to us, and every day we see his healing work. He has already healed and restored us emotionally, spiritually, and relationally in miraculous ways. God does not have to heal Colby physically to be Jehova Rapha. He has already done so much. But we continue to pray for complete healing and restoration, and we believe he is doing something very special right now. Please pray with us for complete healing of Colby’s brain tumor, and be prepared to give Him all the glory when He provides it.
As always this email list is intended to be composed of people who want to pray for us and have either directly or indirectly asked to be added to it. If you do not want to receive emails or do not plan to pray, we agree that you should not be recieving these emails and we would be happy to remove your email address. We promise we won't be offended. Just let us know, please.
We continue to be blessed by your faithful prayers and support of us, even when we are not faithful in keeping you updated. Please continue in prayer. We are always in need of it.
Thankful for your fellowship and prayers,
Colby, Emily, Jireh, and Rapha
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