Finally

Sorry to keep you all hanging on the results on Katia. I just finally got word Wednesday. Everything looks good on her spine, brain stem, and no tethered cord! Praise the Lord! She will see the orthopadic surgeon doc(Dr. Southern)in April to see how her scoliosis is progressing if it is, and hopefully without another x-ray. I guess then he'll decide if she'll need a brace or what.
Thank you all for your prayers!
Another answered prayer I want to share involves a childhood friend named Tabitha. She lives here in Escanaba and we've been friends since Jr. High. We've kept in touch over the years. I think it was about 7 years ago that she had been diagnosed with a type of abdominal cancer. She didn't have any kids at the time, but they had been trying. This cancer was removed, but she found out that she couldn't have any children. So she and her husband adopted twins- a boy and a girl, which I think were almost a year old. She's a really great mom. Anyway, in the first part of September I ran into her at Walmart. She shared with me that her doctor had just found more cancer- in her abdomin. It looks as if all the cancer wasn't removed the first time. So this was more serious. At that time she was bracing for radiation and chemo and with two young children also. I told her I would put her on our prayer list at our church and offered to help in any way she needed. She explained that her dad took a medical leave of absence to be with her during all the treatments and to help her with the kids and meals. So then I saw her again in December I think. She had lost her hair and was visibly swollen. She had a terrible time with the treatments, found out she was allergic to most of them. She and her husband had made the decision to stop the treatments. When she told me this, I had this lump in my throat. Did this mean she would die? So she has been on our prayer list every Sunday since September okay. Well our church started a 21 day fast/spiritual adventure. We had prayer meetings each Sunday night during it- alot in our church participated. It started the 1st of Jan and went through the 21st of Jan. On January 20th, I got an email from my friend Tabitha that she had been down to Green Bay for a special tumor marker blood test. God is soooo good! She found out that she was completely cancer free!!!!!! I know that God heard our prayers for her.
Now also, Katia's MRI's were also done during this fast. Can you see what I'm getting at? Baptists in general don't stress fasting. We had a church wide fasting a couple years ago, during our Fire and Reign adventure, but it wasn't a long term fasting. We had training on fasting this time. There are several different types. I did the partial fast since the last time I tried the perfect fast, I didn't do so well. I was able to fast for a week this time. Next time, I'll try a different one. The whole idea is to do the fast that is a challenge to you. A true sacrifice to the Lord, a blessing to him. And to use the time or resources to get closer to God through his word. Here's the cool part too. Paul had been at church with us when we started the discussions about fasting and praying for our City to be taken back over by God. So he even fasted. And he said last night about Katia, "God sure answered our prayers didn't he?"
During the first week of the fast, our church was approached by phone to consider having this Stand Strength Team www.standstrengthteam.org come and have our church be the host to them when they came to visit the schools in the district. Irregardless, they were coming to the schools, that part was already set up. They are a crusade of bodybuilders that visit schools to teach kids to stay away from destructive things like drugs, alcohol, etc. They do these amazing feats of strength during their performances to show what a person can do with God's strength in their lives. They are the #1 school assembly program in the country. Well, since I'm on the full board, I was in the vote to decide if we should host them. I honestly had my hesitation to it, but I voted in favor of it. Our Evangelism Pastor seemed confident in them and in our efforts to raise the support we'd need. We had little time because another church in the area cancelled them because of their church super bowl party! Um yeah. So they came last weekend. It was amazing to say the least. The first night- Friday, we had 325 people packing the church. I don't know what our code capacity is, but the largest funeral we've had was for Bob Anderson and that was about 250 and that was to capacity. So at 325, people were standing. Saturday night, we had 475. We had a television monitor in the felllowship hall for those who couldn't get in the sactuary. Sunday morning, 220(I think)were there and Sunday night, another 300. Now each performance, we had about 90% of these that had made committments to the Lord! That is an impact on Escanaba! So does fasting work, does God bless those who fast- I would have to say a big YES!!!