The classical surgery was much more invasive and increased her expected recovery time by several weeks.  She spent two nights in the hospital and I took her home on Thursday the 28th.  On Friday morning, she had a coughing fit after her shower and said she felt like she ripped something open inside.  By Friday afternoon, she stopped going to the bathroom and the pain began increasing.  The on-call doctor for the weekend figured she was constipated and told us we needed to get her off the narcotic pain meds and switch to Ibuprofen.  Karri disagreed.  The doctor told me to put her on Miralax so I did.  We went on like this until her appointment with the surgeon the following Wednesday.  The surgeon examined Karri and listened to her story, then told me to take her back to the hospital.  He was re-admitting her for a CT scan to see if she had indeed ripped something open.  Turns out she had a herniated small bowel.

Back into surgery at 3:00am on Thursday, February 4.  The rupture was large enough so that it did not cut off blood flow to the herniated part of the bowel.  They were able to push the bowel back into place and close the rupture.  The doctor said it was the best possible outcome given the circumstances.  They had re-opened the original incision, so this time they added what they call retention sutures to help hold the wound edges together without putting strain on the staples.  This time she spent four nights in the hospital and they sent her home with me on Sunday, February 7.

Last week did not go well at first.  Karri’s pain was intense and every evening her fever would spike.  She would go very pale and get the shivers something awful.  There was a listless look in her eyes.  I saw no progress and she felt no relief Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.  By Wednesday evening I was beginning to worry and Karri told me she felt like she was losing the battle.  That scared me.

Karri had me turn off all distractions and read to her from the Bible.  We prayed and then I read several chapters to her starting from her bookmark in 2 Chronicles.  After I read to her for a while she grew calm and she told me she felt a warm, tingly sensation in her belly.  The pain diminished somewhat, the fever broke, and we were both able to get some rest.

The next morning, Thursday, Karri called our church and requested a pastor or elder anoint her for healing.  Now several pastors were away at a conference and there had been deaths and illnesses in some of the other pastors’ families, so staff was spread pretty thin (2010 has started off rather brutally for many of us).  We were told the word was out and someone would get back to us.  By Thursday afternoon, the fever was spiking early and Karri was getting desperate.

It was about 4:45pm when I went into the home office and sat down at the computer.  Just as I sat down, the receptionist from church IM’d and asked if we had heard from a pastor.  As I was replying no, I noticed out the window a pair of strangers walking up our street.  I went to the living room where Karri had moved to the couch to let her know her friend had IM’d me about the pastor.  Then I noticed a group of strangers out the window milling about the parking lot of our apartments.  One of them opened our gate and three approached our front door.  They knocked, I answered.  Two men and a young lady stood at our doorstep.

“Hi, we’re from Bethel Church!” said one of the smiling men.

“Hi, we’re from Neighborhood Church,” I replied, “I’m Scott and this is my wife Karri.”  I motioned to my wife, sprawled on the couch with a blanket up to her chin, pale, shivering and looking like death warmed over.

“What, is she sick?” the same man asked.

“Yes, she’s been through some rough surgery.”  I said.

“Can we pray for her?”  he asked.

“Sure, come on in!” I said, “This must be a God thing.”  The timing of their arrival alone seems way beyond coincidence to me.  Seven years in this apartment and Bethel has never before just dropped in on us!  They told us that we were their last stop of the day.  They were about to knock on another door but the Spirit told one of them no, come to our house.

Introductions all around, we had Chet, Jessica and Chris from Bethel Church with us.  Karri had taken her 4:00pm meds so her pain was at about a four on a scale of one to ten.  We laid hands on Karri and prayed for her healing in the name of Jesus.  All three prayed over Karri in turn.  I prayed along with all of them.  As we prayed, Karri says her pain went from a four to a one.  The fever broke.  We prayed for fresh skin to grow in rapidly to fill the gaps.

We prayed and talked and prayed and talked for about half an hour.  Soon Karri’s color returned and she was smiling and laughing.  Chet was a bit of a joker and had Karri cracking up with almost no pain at all.  At one point, Chet began to relate a story about when he was sued by a business associate.  He said he had no money but God provided everything he needed.  He needed not just a lawyer, but a lawyer who was also an engineer.  God provided one!  God provided the finances and God provided the victory in the lawsuit.  All it took was focusing on Jesus instead of the trouble!

“Funny you should mention that,” I told him.  “We’re being sued.”  Karri briefed him on the lawsuit.  I’ll skip the sordid details for now.

“Well he was a minor at the time, right?” Chet verified.  “Well see, there you go!  God has already provided the victory over that just like He’s already healed you!”  We prayed for victory in the lawsuit.  We prayed for healing and reconciliation for our family.  We prayed for my son, who is going through a rough patch.

After they left, I changed Karri’s dressing.  The wounds looked instantly better.  I could see fresh skin growing in where I had not before!  I can still see fresh pink skin growing in.  The fever has not returned once since those folks were here!

Karri and I witnessed Jesus Christ’s healing power at work in our living room on Thursday, February 11, 2010, and we will never forget it!

Thank you Jesus!  You are our Savior, and You are our Mighty Healer!

Waiting for healing

I felt the presence of God in the surgical waiting room at Mercy Medical Center early Thursday morning.  He didn’t say anything, He just gave me His peace.  It was so quiet there all alone at about 4:00am, like being in the eye of a hurricane.  Outside it was chilly and a light rain was falling.

I’ve been optimistic the whole time about this surgery thing.  I know God hasn’t brought me and Karri this far to let us be taken out by a few fibroid cysts, but dang!  What a storm the past couple weeks have been:  Karri’s two surgeries; one son is suing us; another son has been whisked off to rehab.  God’s Son died on the cross for our sins and rose again, so we’re all going to be okay.

I did get one visitor there in the middle of the night while they operated on Karri.  This young guy shuffled in pushing his IV pole.  He was kind of heavy set, unshaven, dressed in street clothes.  Camo cargo shorts, t-shirt with one of those cool new graphics, hat on backwards.  He looked me over and no doubt saw my Bible sitting next to me.  “Know any good churches in town?”  He asked.

“Well yes I do”, I replied.  So I told him about Neighborhood Church and told him it’s on Loma Vista off Bechelli but he didn’t know where that was because he was just passing through on his way from Seattle to Haiti.  So I told him ncredding.com has directions and maps and lots of media too.  Then I looked at his IV pole and told him it looked like Haiti might not be in God’s immediate plan for him.  “Maybe not.”  He said, but he was “up for some praise and worship.”  I said we got that at NCR.  I introduced myself.  His name was Mike.  We shook hands and he shuffled off up the hallway.

Not much later, they brought Karri back to me down that same hallway and she was NOT happy.  The eye passed over and the hurricane resumed.  But this too shall pass.

At the request of U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and another minor candidate who got only 44 votes, New Hampshire officials will conduct a hand recount of the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries.

Read more…

Who is LHS Associates?

Even more information… BlackBoxVoting.org

The most damning evidence came from Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org, who got the head clerk of Sutton Township to admit that Ron Paul got 31 votes there when they had reported zero votes for him. There are a lot of little townships in New Hampshire. Bev Harris was the subject of an HBO documentary a couple of years ago called “Hacking Democracy” about how easy it is to steal an election now that we have electronic voting machines.

And it’s not just Ron Paul who was affected. A lot of Obama supporters are crying foul too. He was polling way ahead of Hillary going into New Hampshire. How long are we going to put up with having our elections stolen? Get mad! Spread the word!

Update 1/10/08: I don’t think I adequately expressed my disgust here earlier. Our elections are RIGGED! We are not truly a free people anymore! Demand a recount! Demand Justice! Demand Liberty!

Paul Watson at PrisonPlanet.com posted a better article than I can write and included several relevant links. Check it out.

Happy New Year! Time for a change of scenery. I wasn’t planning on this, but I was working at Church this morning and things were going well. Bill was back (our Lead Pastor, he was sick last weekend), he was talking about God’s Grace and I was finally starting to feel it for the first time in weeks. It felt so good I wanted to share it. So I asked my good friend Les Faires, he’s the Media Director on staff at Neighborhood Church, if I could shoot a few pictures with my phone. He said sure, go ahead, so I’ve posted some shots of the video control room in action. This is where we edit the video for the video podcast as well as the video venues at church on Sunday. We have overflow services they call “video venues”. One of them has no live worship music, so we shoot the worship music for them at the early service on Sunday. The video podcast can be seen anywhere in the world with an internet connection, and you don’t need an iPod. You can watch it on your computer.

If you click on the picture on the left, you can kind of see Ashley in the director’s seat and Steve sitting next to her. Ashley was directing the three camera operators and mixing those three images and Steve was at the graphics station overlaying the graphics on the screen. I run the audio board, which you can see in that third picture. I had all the channels muted and faded out completely except for Bill’s channel. The music was done and Bill was speaking. That’s Josh on camera two in the last picture. One and three are down in the auditorium in the back corners.

What a great way to start the year! If you don’t go to church much and you want to get 2008 off to a great start spiritually speaking, I encourage you to click over to the podcast page and watch one of Bill’s messages. They’re completely painless, really! Bill is never boring I can assure you. You’ll be uplifted and you don’t even have to get dressed.

Have an awesome 2008!

It was definitely an interesting experience, certainly a first for me. There I was on Dana Drive, at the main entrance to Mount Shasta Mall and Discovery Village along with fifteen or twenty other volunteers, waving a sign and handing out literature about Dr. Ron Paul’s campaign for president.

From a little after 11:00 a.m. to almost 3:00, I imagine I watched a pretty thorough cross-section of the local population pass through that intersection. The public’s response was positive overall. There were an encouraging amount of waves and thumbs up and a few honks, but the majority still seemed unfamiliar with Dr. Paul. And that’s why we’re out there. See you next Saturday.

There were a few jerks, like there are in any crowd. A few middle fingers were waved and I heard a “Ron Paul sucks!” from one car. One guy rolled down his window and yelled at us that it is impossible for Paul to win because Hillary already has it all wrapped up.

The saddest encounter I had was when a car with two young ladies in it stopped in front of me. The passenger rolled down her window so I handed her a flyer and a pocket Constitution. She asked “Is he a republican?” I responded that he is running for the republican nomination, but she didn’t let me finish. Instead of handing the materials back to me, she threw them to the ground, rolled up the window as the light changed, and they drove away. I understand her anger and frustration with republicans, believe me. But it’s sad that she chose to dismiss him so readily. If she had taken a moment to read what I handed her, I’m sure she would have been surprised.

Mall Security even tried to tell us we couldn’t assemble on the public sidewalk and wave our signs. We did anyway.