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Prayer Request: Joseph’s immune system is especially low – please pray for protection and recovery.

Joseph and Brothers

 

For those who were praying – Joseph’s fever broke in the early hours of Saturday morning local time  sometime between midnight and 06:00 am. After days of fever we we were glad to see Joseph comfortable and chatty. However, the medical journey on this “camp out” was not done yet. Blood and urine tests indicated that there was a question about kidney function – was it showing us a sneaky infection in this kidneys that was hiding behind a viral infection? Or was this just stress on his body working its way out? After another day of observation and tests it was determined that kidney function was recovering and there was no indications of any hidden infections. So we were given the all clear to go home  Sunday afternoon- but with the news that Joseph’s neutrophils were 0.3 – meaning that he has very little immune capacity right now. One line of thought is that the virus that Joseph had put a lot of stress on him bone marrow and that has caused the suppression we are seeing – it may continue to go lower before it recovers so until those numbers tick back up he will be at an elevated risk of infection.

This is our longest stay in the hospital for the last 2.5 years. We are so grateful for Nanna – who came in every night to sleep over with Joseph. We are also grateful for the medical team who served us during our “came out” – they were so caring, supportive and skilled.

All of this shows us just how much grace we have received as there are many families who have had more frequent and longer “camp outs”.

If you were to look at Joseph this moment he would look healthy to you but what we can’t see are all the secret workings inside his body.

This reminds me of the situation that we see fairly often in the news where someone who seems “normal” suddenly does something horrible. To look at them on the outside you would never guess that they would harm someone else.  It is because we can not see the secret inner workings of the heart with the sin that dwells there that we end up shocked. And even more so we have a hard time looking into our own hearts to see what lives there as well.

We are grateful that Joseph is now free of infection. In our case of our heart though  there is no drug to fix our sin problem. What is needed is not a “fix” but to be recreated into new beings.

 

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconcilingc the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Cor 5:17-21

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