Well, we have said all along that we would get to Africa on God's timing. In our minds, WE thought that meant if we raised our funds in time. Sometimes God has other plans and everything is in His timing so we are trusting this too!
We came out to Maine the week before Thanksgiving to see Lucas' Grandpa and other extended family before we left. We left on Saturday to drive back to Indiana, and our plan was to leave for Senegal in six days. We received a phone call Sunday night that Lucas' dad (Bill) had a MILD heart attack (which basically means it was caught early and there was not much damage to his heart). He was transferred to a different hospital on Monday morning that does more specialized heart care. He had a heart catheterization done on Tuesday morning, and the original plan was they thought they would just put a stent in and be good to go. However we received some unexpected results, even to the doctor. We found out that he would be having quadruple bypass surgery done on Wednesday morning. Needless to say, at this point we decided it would be best to stay in the states for a little longer and go back up to Maine to see Lucas' family again.
We are very thankful for a number of things.
1) The heart attack was caught early on and not much damage was done to the actual heart.
2)The doctors' were very pleased with how the surgery went and Bill is now home recovering.
3) Bill was in the states and not in Africa when this happened so he was able to receive immediate medical care.
4) We were in the states and were able to change our plans to come back out to see Bill.
Now by this point we are sure many of you are thinking, so are you still going to Senegal??
Yes, we are! We put our tickets on "hold" so hopefully all we will have to pay is a change fee. At this point, OUR plan is to leave mid-January. (Of course OUR plan was to leave in November, but God knew the whole time we would not leave then and even now knows when we will leave!) If we tried to get tickets now, it would cost a significant amount more to buy our tickets. So we will wait until after the Christmas and New Year "rush" when the tickets are about the same price as before. So we will stay up in Maine with Lucas' family to help around the house some and then celebrate Christmas with them. Then we will go back to Indiana to celebrate Christmas with Bekah's family and stay with Bekah's parents until we leave.
Obviously we have had to stay very flexible over the past week and will need to continue to be. We will try to keep you as up to date as possible! We hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and will enjoy the Christmas season!
