At MD Anderson In Houston

Friends and Family,

We arrived in Houston Tuesday evening and started our experience at MD Anderson Wednesday morning.  They are very thorough and very busy!  They do scans here until 11:00 at night.  The place is amazing - it is like a city - there are so many people here. You don't have to look far to see someone far worse off than we are - we have so much to praise the Lord for!

When we came out we asked some of you to pray that we could be finished by Friday because we had gotten an email that said to plan on being here thru Tuesday.  Well, PTL, they were able to get all testing done and see us for our final consult.

We did not get the news we were hoping for.  When the doctor saw us with the results of the scans he said that the tumor in the lung is the same size which is good news but that there is a small tumor in the liver and one near the colon where his last surgery was.  They are both small which is good and he is not eaten up everywhere with cancer which is another praise.

They recommend chemo but they don't give us much hope of it being successful.

We are in the process of contacting a doctor  in Germany who has had a lot of success with another type of therapy.  We will first find out if they think Mark would be a could candidate for this therapy and then pray about whether or not we should go down that path. The process he is using is immunology - for those interested the web site is http://www.immunologyfoundation.org/
While we didn't get the news we wanted we know that God is sovereign and we trust Him completely.  Ultimately we can go to 10 different countries and try many different therapies but God is our healer and He alone knows the number of our days and that alone is what gives us peace.

We covet your prayers as we seek God for what He wants us to do and what path we should go down.  We also ask prayers for our children as this is hard on them and we just hate to see them going thru this.

Before we left I had asked God to give me a word and He gave me Psalm 112:7-8 (look it up in NIV) - it talks about us not being afraid of bad news - He does not want us to be afraid but to TRUST in Him.

We will be back in Atlanta Saturday evening.  On Monday we will hit the ground running back in our regular life but also looking for what we are to do next.

We love you all and thank you ahead of time for your prayers on Mark's behalf.

Praying for Healing,

Mark and Lee

Psalms 103:1-4 

Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies.

James 5:14-16 

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.  Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.