Health update & travel plans

Hi! It’s been quite a while since we’ve posted an update, so we have a number of things to fill you in on. 

First, I wanted to follow up on our health concerns that I had mentioned previously. Alex is doing much better, and has been able to return to his normal activities like school and youth activities at church, so we’re super thankful for that. Ruth, on the other hand, is still in the process of slowly recovering from her head injury. She is working through post-concussion syndrome and still struggles with nerve-pain and daily headaches, which we’re told can take upwards to a year (or more) to heal from. They’ve prescribed her a medication to reduce pain caused by nerve inflammation, and that has been helping a lot with the pressure and headaches. She’s able to drive on short trips now, and do most regular activities, but certain things still cause an immediate headache and new things are still hard for her. TV and computer screens still give her headaches and too much sequential thinking causes problems, though she has been doing some specific cognitive exercises (which are sequential thinking), and she’s steadily improving in that regard.
Some of you may have heard that Josiah had a bit of a health scare as well, but as best the doctors can figure out, his diagnosis is “classic migraine,” which is causing headaches and vision problems. They’ve also ordered a follow-up MRI in 3-6 months to monitor an abnormal vein cluster they found in his brain, just to rule out any other issues, but will hopefully prove to be just a birth defect without any adverse health repercussions.

​On another subject, we’d like to share our upcoming travel plans. We will be making a brief trip (six weeks) to the US for the holidays in December, then staying through the end of January. We’ll be holding meetings and doing some presentations at Christian discipleship training programs. The goal is to increase awareness and interest among graduates in coming to Thailand as homeschool helpers. We have families here who are contacting us in need of homeschool assistance, but the two potential young folks we had lined up to arrive for this school year were not able to come. One thing we’re passionate about is doing what we can to help keep families on the field long term and addressing homeschooling needs can be a huge part of that. Just last week a missionary family who recently welcomed their seventh baby called me to inquire about getting a homeschool helper to just do science experiments with their older kids. By the time I got finished explaining what we hope to offer, they were asking what they had to do to qualify and how to get to the top of the waiting list!

​Despite the quick planning time, the trip details are coming together pretty well already. Last time our friend, Khun Lek and her daughter, stayed in our house while we were in the States. This time a single missionary named Greg will house sit for us. It’s not generally a good idea to leave a house sit vacant here due to possible insect/small animal infestations and mold growth. On the US side, Lily Shurance has offered to lend her minivan to us for the duration of our time, so that’s a huge answer to prayer! We won’t have time to visit and update our churches on this trip due to the holidays/special services, the short length of the trip, and because our focus will be meeting and speaking with people and organizations about bringing young folks over to Thailand for a year for Inspire. So if we don’t get to catch up with you during this trip, we’ll make it a point to do so on our next trip to the States.