Hello Friends,

In spite of the challenges our family has faced, I am humbled and extremely grateful for the past three months of our lives. God has a way of changing us when we face pain in our lives and need to rearrange our plans and trust Him in a greater way. We usually have the idea that we know God’s plan and simply move forward to accomplish it. But we’ve learned many times how quickly this can all change. And when I have vision and direction, it can be hard to adapt well to such drastic change.

As we are building our lives, each minute and hour seems to have a specific purpose. Let’s compare building our lives to building a house. When you are forced to remove one piece of the structure we think should stay there, the building will not seem as strong to us. When you keep pulling out several pieces, the whole building will become something entirely different than we had envisioned and we may become alarmed that it will collapse. However, when we realize our Great Architect is determining which pieces remain or become removed, we can rest in the assurance that He’s building an amazingly creative and magnificent design.

Instead of the focus our family thought we were going to have, our lives were rearranged. We interacted and related with people we’d never met before. We were the recipients of the love and provision of God in so many amazing ways. A church, where we’d never been before, allowed us to park and plug in the bus, get water, and use the church for our office. A nurse practitioner donated her time and care. A medical clinic went way beyond their normal services to walk with us and assisted us in knowing how to continue some of Alisha’s treatments from home. Several individuals shared their vehicles with us so we could park the bus and drive a smaller vehicle back and forth to the clinics. Anonymous donors have given to From Pain to Purpose, filling in the financial deficit caused by us needing to cancel our fall travel schedule.

From a health perspective and financial perspective, God has been saying to us, “Trust Me for today and take no thought for tomorrow”. This doesn’t give room for lack of planning or laziness, but it means to not allow the unknown of tomorrow steal our joy for today. God has done and continues to do a work of changing and transforming our lives into His image.

We arrived home last week and are all excited to be home again. Everyone was very willing to rearrange our schedule and do the treatments for Alisha…but after 4 weeks, and then 5 and 6 weeks, everyone was very ready to come home.

Alisha has improved significantly but is still not back to her baseline. Last week, the transplant cardiologist at Duke Medical Center declined our request to reduce her immunosuppressant medication, but we are continuing alternative therapy to counteract the side affects of her medication. We continue to press forward in finding the best options for her. 

Each of us are excited about the “Light of Our World” DVD release. Our concept and desire for this dvd is how Emanuel (Christ with us) enters in and changes our world. Please pray with us that these truths will impact children and adults alike as they view these stories through song.

Thank you for standing with us in our ministry focus as well as these months we have been focused on treatment for Alisha. Continue to join us in prayer that believers will embrace the pain in their lives and allow God to transform it into a greater, eternal purpose. 

Because of Jesus,

Duane