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Howdy y'all!!!
I have wonderful news to share for everyone! Things have been really busy for us over here in Cebu for several reasons. Session 8 of 2012 ended, beginning our vacation for the end of the year. We closed down the BSC and went to Mom and Dad's for a week or two, got a lot of cleaning done, and just recuperated from all the sleep we have lost this year. It was very fun, but Amy's back surgery was scheduled for January 7th, and that hung in the back of our minds. Nevertheless, we put puzzles together, baked and cooked, watched movies together, and just enjoyed being with one another without any schedule. I must confess that I slept more than I probably ought to have, but I don't regret it :).
But vacations must always come to an end, and so ours did. We headed back to our respective houses after New Year's and started preparing for our Open House at the BSC. We sometimes have an Open House to invite people into the BSC to take a look around and see what we have to offer. We held this last one on January 5th and had around 12 good contacts show up. We offered a video for kids and had one of our rooms designed to advertise our Children's Program. We also had enrollment and the schedule for Session 1 of 2013. We had a classroom in which, when enough students were present, we introduced our course Archaeology and the Bible. In addition, we advertised our seminar for January 9-11. We are excited and look forward to seeing how many of our visitors enroll in classes.
On the family front, most of you have been made aware of my sister Amy's health situation. Amy has been having back pain for over a year now. She went to the doctor and he thought that she might have a slipped disc. To help relieve the pain and remove the problem, he prescribed that she go on 24 hours traction to help the disc slip back into place. Traction is when they strap two belts around your body; one connecting you to the top of your bed while the other connecting you to some weights which weigh about 1/3 of your body weight. Well, she did as he said, followed by some extra traction later on (the doctor said that the problem may not be solved the first time). It really seemed to help, but the pain returned and even worsened. Amy's doctor then recommended that she get an MRI to see what was going on under the surface. The results came and he referred Amy to a bone specialist who told us that Amy had a bone tumor. We were floored, as you may imagine, and could only think of the worst. Her new doctor then told us that we needed to do a surgery to biopsy the tumor to determine what kind of tumor it was. This was before the holidays.
Amy's doctor suggested that we wait until the end of the holidays so that she could enjoy her break without having to be in bed for it. After the holidays, we returned to her office and scheduled the surgery for January 7 at 9AM in one of the hospitals in the city. As the day approached, we all grew anxious and were eager for the procedure to take place. The day did come, and before the surgery I found myself surrounded by my family, laughing and joking with Amy before the doctors came to take her down. I was so uplifted by my family. Before Amy went in, we said a prayer and asked the Lord to give us all strength to deal with whatever came from the surgery.
Amy was taken into the Operating Room at around 9AM. This situation brought back some interesting memories of when Jon had surgery back in 2002. The doctors estimated that the procedure would take about 4 hours, and we heard word (The wait had seemed an eternity!) that Amy was fine! We were completely overjoyed by what the doctors told her about the tumor they found. The tumor they found was one that is benign, not cancer! They removed what they found of the tumor, as eventually it might break the bone, took samples to send off for confirmation that they were not the exception to normal findings, and sewed Amy up. She came out of recovery about 5PM later that night and I got to see her at around 9PM.
She has made amazing progress since then. Last night she was able to get out of bed and walk for the first time since Monday morning, and today the doctor released us and we came home this afternoon! I was able to stay with her From Monday night until this (Wednesday) afternoon. She has been so courageous and patient through the whole progress, and I admire her immensely for that. Thank you all who have helped us; whether emotionally, financially, or with prayers to the Lord in her behalf. The Lord has been so wonderful to us, and as I type, Amy is sleeping near me, a reminder to me that the Lord can do amazing things :).
In addition to that "small piece" of information, this week is a super busy one for us for another reason. As per our usual practice, we are holding a seminar to advertise classes. Dad is teaching a seminar titled "Modern Idolatry and Beyond" in which he hopes to cover what Idolatry is and how it can be more than just bowing down to images. We should have the class available online whenever he finishes, and I can give the link in my next newsletter. People often think that, as long as we don't worship images we're not committing idolatry. The difficult truth is, however, that anything that we put before God becomes our god. This is an important topic here in the Philippines as well, because idol worship is rampant. We had a few new faces tonight, which is very exciting. Please keep this effort in your prayers.
Everyone else in the family is doing well. We've had our share of colds and coughs floating around, but most of us seem to be finished with them. Please keep us in your prayers, especially Amy as she is (God-willing) on the road to recovery.
In him,
Sara Murrell