We want to thank all of you who have sent kind messages regarding our trip to Yolanda's mom's. Dozens of you sent encouraging messages regarding her health, as well as our decision to come and we greatly appreciated each of them. Our next blog will cover the last week we were in Zimbabwe and some "extra" things we were able to do for the women due to several of you giving special gifts. It was another crazy week (right after the VBS week), just before leaving.

On our way to England, we were blessed with a 30 hour layover in Qatar. We got a hotel and were able to have a full day of rest. It was too short and was a much needed time to physically and emotionally take time out after a whirlwind of the past couple months in Zim and before the physical and emotional stress of helping a sick parent. We really enjoyed the beach and getting to swim in the Persian Gulf in the 105 degree temps.

We've been in England for just over 2 weeks and already have had plenty of ups and downs. Yolanda's mom surprised us by meeting us at the airport. She had previously been in the hospital for a couple days and during our travel days we weren't sure if she was still in the hospital or not. She had also been scheduled to have chemo the day we arrived and she did go to that appointment, but was told by the doctor that even with the reduced amount of chemo and a change of formula of chemo that it was still in fact killing her. So he said that the chemo must stop. Anyone who has chemo gets severe side effects, but she was getting all the known terrible side effects - pain, rashes, blisters, balding, sore scalp, nausea (extreme vomiting which resulted in a 13.2lb weight-loss in her first week of chemo), migraines, blood clots, splitting nails, dry mouth etc, etc, etc, the list goes on. She has truly been through the wringer and ended up in hospital after every chemo session with how deathly ill she has gotten. She even had hearing loss and her oncologist made it clear that if they didn't stop chemo that it would literally kill her.

Since her cancer had been successfully removed, she was doing chemo to prevent it from coming back and now there is nothing preventing that. Lung cancer is number 1 on the top ten list of deadliest cancers, with a survival rate of only 5 years assuming preventative measures are taken, i.e. chemo, etc. So this diagnosis has been a rather scary realization for what the future holds. Meanwhile, while in the hospital, she picked up a lung infection and has been on several prescriptions ever since. Her first lot of antibiotics did nothing which resulted in her needing a stronger course with steroids to get it in check. We have a handful of alarms set on our phone day and night so we remember to make sure that she is taking what she needs. Before her meds Yolanda was up multiple times through the night checking her temperature every couple hours, since any form of fever for a cancer patient is an immediate reason to be hospitalized.

Yolanda's mom still has 3 blood clots which need to dissolve on their own, so Yolanda gives her a shot in her stomach every evening to help thin her blood. Her mom gets anxious every evening in anticipation of these shots. They have also caused terrible bruising all over her stomach.

During a previous exam, the doctor felt a lump on her side. Yesterday, we went to the hospital for scans and were thankful to find that there was no new cancer and it was actually nothing. She has upcoming appointments for blood tests to check her progress and see if her white blood cell count has changed or not. We continue to ask for your prayers concerning all of this.

She continues to cough quite a bit and is out of breath very easily, whether it's walking up the stairs or just walking from one room to the other. She's been prescribed an inhaler which can help for times when her chest tightens up and struggles to breathe at all. With only 1 1/3 lungs shortness of breath is normal at this point, but it's the infection which has really intensified this. Yolanda also checks her oxygen levels and blood pressure regularly. We are grateful for all these tools on hand at home to check up on mom's medical needs.

Everything is quite busy with the medical side of everything, but also everything else that needs to be done around the house, grocery shopping, cooking, washing dishes (no dishwasher), laundry, yardwork, vacuuming. This is all regular housework, but in addition to not wanting to leave Yolanda's mom alone and the amount of time she sleeps and also burning the candle at both ends to check on her throughout the night and medications early and late, it is all quite busy.

Having cancer is expensive, we are grateful that chemo and medications for the most part have been covered but there is so much more involved. Yolanda's mom hasn't been able to work for 1.5 years now so just regular bills are an on-going struggle. We have been grateful to be here to assist even in those areas. A friend purchased an older, yet road worthy vehicle (barely, but is fine for a few months), for us to use while here to help us do everything that we need to do.

We ask that you also pray for our emotional and mental well-being. We arrived exhausted and that really hasn't changed for us. We are working hard and resting when we are able so that we don't burn out, but our bodies have been under a lot of pressure for quite awhile now. Please pray for continued good health, rest, and emotional well-being.

We are thankful for the blessing it is to be here and care for Yolanda's mom and we appreciate your continued prayers for her health and also us, physically and emotionally.

It doesn't seem like that long ago, but we just realized that it was exactly one year ago this past weekend that we were visiting Albion Evangelical Free Church, outside of Minneapolis. It was our first stop of eleven churches that we visited while in the US last year. We have wonderful memories of that weekend and all the other weekends we spent at our supporting churches around the country during those months. This past weekend, however, we didn't visit anyone. We were too busy recovering from last week's exciting whirlwind that was Vacation Bible School (Holiday Bible Fun) :-)

VBS went very well! All 120 children thoroughly enjoyed it. They learned all about creation as recorded in Genesis, made fun crafts, played games, enthusiastically sang songs, and had healthy meals. Many of the children were familiar faces, but there were some new ones. The usual group attended from the local orphanage, minus the ones who started high school.

On the first day, one 8 year old was so excited that he woke his mom up at 4:30am, telling her that they needed to get going so that he wouldn't miss it! They really do look forward to this event each time. Our registration filled up in just one weekend.

We give the children a memory verse each day, which they recite to us the following day and receive a sticker if correct. In the US, stickers are sometimes overdone and children unimpressed. However, these children love stickers. They don't get stickers in school or anywhere else, because you can't find stickers in any store in Zimbabwe. We always buy them in South Africa. Most children usually know their memory verse and excitedly show the sticker they received to all the rest of the children, and everyone oohs and ahhs.

We heard from one of the women that one of the girls who attended was in tears over the weekend because she didn't have a new verse to memorize. She told the mother that all she needed to do was teach her a short verse and she could memorize it. The woman didn't have a Bible, so the lady from our group took time to write down several verses for the girl so that she could memorize them. How wonderful it is to hear about the ladies from our groups teaching others how to memorize God's Word.

They always love craft time because even though art is supposed to be taught in schools, there are never any supplies, so many of these children would have colored in a picture for the first time this week. They enjoyed all of the crafts, but their favorite was probably when the creation of man was highlighted, specifically that all of us were created in God's image. This was especially important, because the cultural myth that many people believe is that white people descended from Adam and Eve, and black people descended from monkeys. We wanted them to have no doubts that each of them were created in the image of God.

So this craft was a paper plate that they decorated and then had a polaroid photo taken of them that they glued in the center of the plate. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but even with the advent of cell phones when they would have seen a picture of themselves, none of them would have an actual photograph of themselves. This was quite a novelty. The 13 year olds are at an age where when they are around their friends, they act like they're too cool for some things. However, when one 13 year old girl was given her photograph and she glued it on, she had a huge smile toward Yolanda, sharing, "Look what I have!" A half second later, she realized her friends were looking at her and she quickly put on a "I don't care" face, so she wouldn't appear to be enjoying it. Haha, teenagers...but, it was too late and we saw her joy, so we know she and all the others were proud to show off their pictures!

There were parents who thanked us profusely for this photo craft because they said they have pictures of their children on their phones, but when their phones get full then they'll need to delete pictures. Now they said they are so excited to have an actual photograph of their child!

The last day is always fun. At the end, we have a ceremony where parents, grandparents, and other family members are invited. Each child received a certificate and a couple small gifts. The children sang two songs for the audience, including motions. We show a slideshow from the week and have refreshments for the family members who attended. We also had prizes for children who attended every day and also knew their memory verses every day.

On this day the children always wear their Sunday best, the nicest clothes that they own. The women who volunteered also brought nice clothes to change into for the ceremony. One of the children and his family were supposed to leave on Friday for holiday, but he convinced his parents to change the dates so he could be at the "graduation" as he called it.

There was one set of parents who thanked us for the week whose child came this year for the first time. When he was invited, the parents argued with each other about whether or not he should attend. One was for it, but the other didn't know what these white people wanted with their child. He thought this may be another one of the satanic groups. After hearing from other children what the first day was like, they let him attend the rest of the week and were so thankful that he did.

Please pray for all the children and their families as their hearts continued to be moved by the Lord.

We could post more pictures on the blog, but we thought it would be more enjoyable to watch the video below, which contains MANY of our pictures from this year.

At the end of each day, we posted pictures, updates, and items of prayer throughout the VBS week on our Facebook page, which is called Jesu Ministries 2 Zim. If you haven't "Liked" us yet and missed out on those posts, go to Facebook now and "Like" us to look at past posts and receive all future ones (click on the Facebook icon at the top of this page)! We never post anything ministry related on our personal Facebook accounts for security reasons, so we ask that you don't either. Instead, our Jesu Ministries 2 Zim account is where you can find everything relating to ministry that isn't in the blog.