Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled, Trust in God

John 14:1-3

"Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God; trust also in me.
In my Father's house are many rooms;
if it were not so, I would have told you.
I am going there to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back and take you to be with me
that you also may be where I am.”

December 29, 2005

Dear praying friends,

There is a lot to consider right now, and we aren’t finding an awful lot of time to process what this month has meant, or even what it feels like.

In light of that, I needed to update you anyway, so that you can stay connected to us in this unusual time. I’ll have to save the impressions and “take-homes” for another day.

KATY
Katy is home from the hospital. We are leaning on the Lord for the renewal of her strength. I hope you stay tuned to the realities of her medical challenges by checking her blog regularly. http://katyreel.blogspot.com

HELEN THOMAS
The past few days have been particularly difficult. Most of you know Irene, Maria, Juanita, Cruz and Angel Thomas. And you know the relationship Wayne and I have had with them since they were all very small. In fact, at some given times they have all lived with us, Juanita for the longest, almost four years. Irene is our receptionist, both Irene and Maria were in Mom’s Place, and now in StoryTellers, and all the girls and their children are very involved in many parts of the ministry.

You noticed that Helen, their mom, had been hospitalized, in my last email. Well, her condition became grave, and on Christmas Eve, the doctors told the girls that Helen’s life support was not helping her, and her body was tired, and she was ready to go. Almost all of her organs were failing and there was no brain activity.

Since Helen was born on Christmas day, the girls asked if they could wait until Monday. And so it was. Many family members came by. We were prayerfully present the entire time. Hospice began services, a catholic priest came to deliver last rites, and both brothers had been contacted in their respective prisons. There was a great deal of grief and deep, deep sadness. It was a heavy day, but also, a great deal of peace, somehow for those of us clinging to Jesus.

The life-support was discontinued at 4:30 and Helen passed peacefully at 5:00 PM. Helen knew Jesus with a simple faith, responding both to our evangelisms over the years, and to her children who wanted to gift her their saving faith. Helen remembered the Jesus of her childhood, who she learned had come to seek and to save those whom are lost. We will see Helen in heaven. (With my mom, maybe right next door)

The past two days, we have been busy with arrangements. Helen will have services at The Neighborhood Center on Wed., all night with a wake, and then burial Thursday morning of next week. We are fund-raising with her dear children; the costs are about $6,000.00. Please contact me if you can help in any way.

AND THEN …
… for those of you who know Desiree Garcia (Justine Garcia’s cousin). Her brother Miguel Rodriquez who we had with us for years when he was younger (our last record of him with us was when he was 9), accidentally shot himself on Christmas day and passed. We met her in the hospital, right after she had gone to the church to look for me. It was so strange, because Juanita said to her that Miguel was her best friend in grade school. He was fourteen. For those of you who remember her and love her, I am going to need some help with this situation. Call me about this also if you can help.

Please pray for the Thomas family and the Garcia/Rodriguez family as they suffer with their grief and loss

WHERE is your God in the midst of all this?" sometimes critics say as they comment on the terrific pain of the world, of our families, in our midst. I was impressed hearing a Christian answer, "You should ask the question again, but move the question mark! Then you will get a powerful answer."

"What do you mean?" says the critic.

"Where is God?" The answer is, "In the midst of all this."

Christmas Prayer Letter

Emmanuel.

God with us.

I’m not sure how to begin. The past two weeks have been remarkably terrible but never have any of us felt like we were without the presence of Jesus, bearing it all.

… for He Himself has said, "I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU," so that we confidently say,
"THE LORD IS MY HELPER, I WILL NOT BE AFRAID …"

A week ago Thursday (Dec. 1), I visited my mom, to take care of her. She was suffering what we thought was the flu. My sister had been with her all day but now had to go to work, so I would do the night shift. I kept my sister updated throughout the visit, mom was eating, and it seemed an improvement. She was restless, in some discomfort, but she was always fiercely independent, and would not hear of going to the hospital. She let me care for her until she could rest, and we agreed my sister would check on her in the morning.

Ironically, I then left for the hospital where Juanita, Irene and Maria’s mom was also very sick and in intensive care. Once again it seemed she might be dangerously close to the edge. I got to the hospital and we prayed for Helen, sat in the chapel together, and cried out and prayed together. The girls were very afraid, as their mother looked really bad.

The next morning, just as I was beginning my class with the interns, my sister called. She had found our mom on the floor, collapsed. She had died, apparently early in the morning. We have since found out she had a heart attack. Her flu like symptoms were instead, heart failure. We didn’t know.

I hurried over, as did our brother. We sat on the floor with our mom’s body and felt every feeling you have at such a time, so terribly conflicted with the suddenness and horror, I was especially worried for my sister. It was a terrible time. My daughter Heather was with me, so was my husband Wayne. Billy and Charlotte from church … other family members began arriving. It was a whirl of the familiar and surreal.

I worried for the girls, would they take this as a sign their own mom wouldn’t make it. Didn’t Luis just lose his dad and Jeremy just lose his grandpa a few weeks ago, Katy’s grandpa died on Thanksgiving, Jessica and Dallas lost their grandpa last week, Nikki, her grandma also last week, and then Ingrid’s mom died the day after my mom and so did Kelley’s dad. As a ministry family, we were very aware that we were in a very sad and unique time that has been difficult to absorb. Mostly, I think we are all a little numb. The small touches we could give each other came at great cost, the costliness of loving when the well is not overflowing, loving because we are loved. I have been so loved by this precious family, believe me.

Then, as if we somehow were able to bear it, the day before my mom’s funeral, more bad news came. Our dear Katy’s cancer had come back. This time, three tumors, in three different lobes … and we limped into the funeral of my mom, broken. “What kind of a week is this?”

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.

I had spent a good deal of the week with my family getting ready for the funeral. I took a suitcase full of old family scrapbooks, artfully compiled by my grandmother, to glean a slide show for my mom, to visually tell her story. I have become my family’s historian, holding the stories that are hard for my family to know and sometimes hear, and to retell the ones that give our dim memories life and connect us to our realities. This story telling has often helped my own sanity and healing, mostly because it bears all the marks of redemption. The three of us, Mark, Beth and I are all believers. We have married believers and have raised our children in the admonition of Jesus, who is Lord of our homes. This is extraordinary since our family history has some pretty messy parts, despite our affluent foundation. Our dad took his own life while we were very young, a scandal still well known in upper crust Milwaukee.

While doing this I took some time to sit with an old friend on the internet (what you might call an historical mentor), Adnoriam Judson.

Maybe you’ve heard of Adnoriam Judson. Judson distinguished himself as being the first American missionary in the year 1813. God brought Judson to Burma. It wasn’t until the 6th year of his ministry to Burma that Judson saw one convert come to Christ, think of that! Do you know how many people came to Christ the 7th year of Judson’s time there? 500! Year after year after year the Burmese churches experienced tremendous growth. By the close of Judson’s ministry in Burma in which he translated the Bible into Burmese the church had grown to over 7000 members and he oversaw 163 missionaries. To this day the Burmese churches have a custom. If you were to walk into a church in Burma and yell at the top of your lungs “Judson” the people respond with the word “Blessed”.

When they asked Judson, how did you become a Christian? He told them an almost unbelievable story. He said he grew up in a Christian home where his father, a preacher, taught him to read a Greek New Testament at the age of 5.

He went to Brown University where he lived as an absolute infidel. He partied, he drank he ran with the crowd and lived his young life in absolute debauchery.

It was at Brown University that he met his best friend Earnest. Earnest and he were like twin personalities and did everything together. Then graduation day came and they parted company not knowing if they would ever see each other again.

Years later Judson was on his horse traveling, and still running from God. There was a tremendous rain storm so he stopped at an inn and asked if they had any rooms. The response, “we only have one room, but you can’t have it because next to that room a man is dying tonight. He’s sick and no one can help him. Judson replied “Sir, I care not about this man dying tonight, give me the room, I’ll pay you for it”. Judson said he could hear the man all night long, screaming and then crying screaming and then crying, and though it bothered him, he just put his pillow over his head and eventually fell asleep.

The next morning the cries of the man were conspicuously absent. He went to check out and asked the inn keeper, “Oh, by the way whatever happened to that man next door” “Well, as we thought, last night, he died”. Judson then asked, “What was the man’s name sir?” “His name, his name was Ernest”. He then confirmed it was his best friend from Brown University. The impact caused him to stagger out the door. He got on his horse and continued with a dazed look on his face. He said the hooves of the horse hitting that hard trail, caused two words to echo in his heart: Dead Lost, dead, lost, dead, lost”. He turned around, rode home and fell at the feet of his preacher, father who led him to Christ.

What had God used to start missions in America? Two words: Dead, lost, dead, lost.

I first heard about Judson from my dad’s sister who was trying to make sense of how we kids were turning out so different than how all the onlookers expected. “Troubled”, they predicted, and “they’ll be” … “you know” …! But redemption had taken hold, and we weren’t becoming like their imaginings. God had gotten His hold on us and another story was being told. That was in the early ‘70’s and, because Jesus was the point of the story, my aunt told me why my grandfather was named Judson.

My grandfather, Judson was named after this famous missionary, by his father, who, as the story goes, couldn’t become a preacher because he cried whenever he talked of the cross. This was a great shame in those days when men didn’t cry publicly. This one who changed missions forever and suffered terribly, losing 11 children and two wives to the harsh work, has always been a friend to me, since I first heard of his influence on my poor family. His story is somehow in me and usually gifts me with something that recreates hope for me. Wayne calls him our adopted great-grandfather. Last night, I meditated on this quote from his son’s eulogy for his father and again snagged some truth to go through the week,

“Suffering and success go together. If you are succeeding without suffering it is because others before you have suffered, if you are suffering without succeeding it is that others after you may succeed.”

So, Katy had her surgery Friday, the day of the Mom’s funeral, both happening simultaneously. A few went straight to the hospital after the funeral. I went to the other hospital that afternoon and into the evening, to see what if anything had changed with Helen. It was only today that she made some sign of things improving, although she is still on full life support.

Katy’s condition is regularly updated on her blog. Don’t forget to check it daily as you pray for her. (katyreel.blogspot.com) We are asking God for healing, pray with us for her.

I’m not sure how we are all managing. But LIFE … still breathes its eternal presence all around us. Saturday, the day after the funeral, we breathed it in, the delight of our annual Christmas party, bigger and better than ever (if that’s possible), serving over 2,500 with the beauty of the body of Christ bringing so much joy to so many. Everywhere I walked, I received a new hug, comforting words in Spanish or English; I don’t know when I’ve felt so loved. I am now surrounded by generations at events like this.

I guess that’s how we’re managing; with the overwhelming peace from the presence of Jesus … here for each of us, for me, in a new way, through me still, for others.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever …

My brother-in-law, Michael, comforted us with a good word, about our mom. “She was surrounded by grace”, he said.

I am surrounded by grace. I am!

for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace.
Hebrews 13:5-9

May God richly bless you and your precious families this Christmas season. Thank you for your deep intercession for us that gives us strength and perseverance.

Lovingly, Kit