I spoke at Grace Center on Sunday on the "Tale of Two Sauls". So not only can you read the article, you can watch the video or listen to the audio.
In February we were called back to Scotland to say goodbye to my Mom. She has cancer of the blood and the doctors told our family there was nothing more they could do for her. So we all hopped on a plane to be with our family and pay our last respects.
To our surprise, my mother looked fine! A little weak here and there, but on the whole, she did not look like she was dying. Many people have emailed since and asked how my mom is doing. Here's an excerpt from an email my dad sent out.
On Wednesday evening she collapsed at home. After medical examination she was taken to hospital with presumed pneumonia. Because of her very low immunity she was given intravenous doses of at least two antibiotics. She remained ill for several days but was released 6 days later to continue oral doses of these antibiotics at home. She remained very weak physically and slept much of the time. Since then she has continued to show weakness and sleeps much of the time.
In the light of these series of events, you can imagine our surprise today when we were informed at the hospital that Lana's latest white blood cell count had risen significantly since her time in hospital despite the fact that she has received no injections to boost these during the past 10 days or so. Moreover, the para protein level (an indicator of myeloma activity) had dropped from 63 to 32. We have not seen such a rapid and extensive reduction as this even after several months under the earliest and best treatment. Furthermore, all chemotherapy was stopped several weeks ago! This was as surprising to the medical staff as to us! It seems Lana's increasing weakness in recent weeks was perhaps largely due to a combination of the bacterial infections, the antibiotics to treat these and her very low blood count (76 today!) in addition of course to her myeloma!. We are hoping that the blood transfusion and platelet infusion today will improve her strength in the next few days.
So my mother continues to be an enigma to the medical community and we continue to pray for her strength and healing. Thanks for your kind words and prayers; they are much appreciated.
Last Wednesday, I got a phone call notifying me that my mother - who was diagnosed with cancer of the blood a year ago - was being sent home from the hospital as they could no longer treat her myeloma. This didn't sound good. I asked my dad for more information and this is what I found out:
On Wednesday the consultant confirmed our suspicions that this third chemo drug was not working. Indeed, the para protein blood level had risen dramatically and was now almost the same as when she was first diagnosed nearly 14 months ago. Unfortunately, they have reached the end of any possible further treatment to control this aggressive myeloma. As these cells now dominate the bone marrow her body is unable to produce any significant healthy plasma for the various vital cells in the blood stream. He indicated a life expectancy of only a few weeks but ultimately it is, as with us all, in the Lord's hands.
That was Wednesday. It's now Monday and I'm here in my home town of Dundee a little confused, overwhelmed and unsure of the outlook. Wednesday was hard. We knew from the start that aside from a miracle mum's cancer was terminal; what was alarming was finding out how quickly her situation could deteriorate. Our loving pastors, told us to leave quickly, so the next morning AJ and I put in motion all the steps needed to move five people over the atlantic.
Hindered somewhat by the fact that Tia and AJ's passports had expired - AJ drove to Atlanta to get them renewed and with the aid of much prayer and our congresswoman, she had passports in hand by Friday, by which point flights were booked. All we had to do was pack.
Saturday started early (4am) and was a day of travel which swiftly blurred into Sunday. The kids were amazing, despite precious little sleep and after a short drive from Edinburgh to Dundee and a quick shower and change of clothes we got to see her.
It was a real joy to be with her and she looked great. As she said, "I've got no pain, no breakages and no infections." Amazing given she has no real immune system to speak of and according to her MRI, bones that look like honeycombs. My sister Charis and her family also flew in from the States to see her, so we had a full house which seemed to keep her buoyant.
But we all know the buoyancy was aided by high powered steroids and adrenaline. She's off the steroids now and is at the hospital today for a check up and perhaps a blood transfusion. We're taking things one day at a time as we can't tell the future. All your prayers would be appreciated. We'll post here as things develop.
My mom and dad in 2013, shortly before she was diagnosed. Look at my smile. Now look at hers. Bingo. Just one of the awesome things I've inherited from my mom. Photo courtesy @TinkMcLeod
We rushed off to Scotland this past weekend and because we spent most of the weekend traveling and restraining small children we couldn’t record a podcast. Fear not however; the ever awesome Lyle Phillips who was with us last week gave us so much brilliant stuff that we couldn’t fit it all in. This week, we’ve collected the stuff we cut out due to time so you could laugh along with us. Listen for yourself. (And if you're not a show notes person, this week might be a good one to check out - especially the last item).
We had someone ask us a question this week on our podcast but we didn't have time to answer it properly. We said we'd post a proper answer here (and as it's around an hour, you'll see why we did so!). If you've ever wondered about women in ministry or how to understand those verses in scripture about women being silent, have a listen to this teaching and let us know your thoughts on twitter.
From Grace Center's website:
We are thrilled to announce that Josh and Sarah Parsons, currently the pastors of the School of Supernatural Life have accepted this new position and starting in April will take on this new role of Worship and Creative Arts Pastors. Josh and Sarah are uniquely equipped for this job and are excellent pastors and leaders. Sarah has a fine arts degree and is an internationally recognized oil painter while Josh is an accomplished musician who has traveled the country playing with many different bands and worship leaders in the last thirteen years. Both have served in various capacities over the years at the church with Josh being a worship team member since moving to Grace Center. More than their giftings however, Josh and Sarah love the Lord, are humble in heart and love to lead people into the presence of God.
We mentioned this on this week's podcast, but Grace Center now has an official statement I can link to. Great people. Great news. (And yes, that's the same Sarah Parsons).
“As someone who writes for a living, I can tell you this: anything that keeps me from writing is public enemy number one. And the one thing that most keeps me from writing is fear.”
Excellent article by Shawn that every writer (or any creative person) can identify with.
So we have this amazing book (seriously, check out these reviews on Amazon) which is a 12 week study guide into a revelation of the Father's love. We get so much feedback when we meet people about how the book has helped changed the way they experience God. We want everyone to have a copy. The problem? It's a BIG book and that makes it heavy which means it's pretty expensive to ship outside of the USA.
Our solution has been to make it available on your kindle, on your iPhone or a beautiful (and it's gorgeous!) iPad enhanced edition. That way, wherever you are in the world, hopefully your Kindle or iOS device can download it and you work your way through it without having to pay for shipping.
But we get it, some people (and we don't blame you) want the paper edition. You want to write in it, highlight stuff, feel the pages and that's where we run into problems, because if you live - say in the UK - and you order the book, you'll pay more for shipping than for the book itself! Insanity!
So in recent weeks we've had a number of people in the UK reach out and ask us if we can solve the problem. We're asking our co-publisher to work on getting it into retail channels in the UK. But in the meantime we had a crazy idea. The shipping actually gets cheaper if we ship in boxes that hold 8 copies of the book; this shipping costs drop to around $10 per book (as opposed to around $30 per book!). We already have someone in the UK that we'd ship the big order to and then they'd ship your book(s) via Royal Mail to you!
Confused? Let us explain:
- You order a book from our website (at a special rate - more on that later)
- Once we have enough orders to fill a box of 8 books we'll ship that box to our friend Quinn in the UK. He's a graduate of our School of Supernatural Life and a long time friend. We've trusted him with our house, our car and our kids so we trust him with your address (which he'd need, and you'd have to be okay with him having.)
- Once he receives the big box of eight, he'll ship the individual orders from his home in the UK to your home in the UK
So yes, it's a bit of a jump-through-some-hoops solution, but we really do want you to get ahold of the book and we've had enough interest via email, twitter and Facebook that we thought we should at least try something.
So let's do it this way: if you would like to order a copy of Finding Father and you live in the UK (sorry my European friends, we're just beta testing now so just UK for the time being), fill in the form below. If we get enough people at once who want a copy for this craziness to work, we'll email you and you can place an order and we'll get a copy to you!
So what's the cost? We don't EXACTLY know, but here's what we are willing to do:
- We'll drop the price of the book from $24.99 to $19.99 for this experiment (that's around £13 at today's exchange rate but remember we'll charge you in USD so your price may be different)
- The shipping from USA to UK in our fancy box of 8 scheme will be $10 per book (again around £6.50 at today's exchange but see above)
- We're asking Quinn to find out how much it will be to ship from his house to your house in the UK and we'll roll that into the price you pay us. We've no idea how much that will be, because we haven't lived in the UK for over 10 years but let's estimate it at £5 - around $7.
So total estimated cost of each book will be $37 shipped - around £25 (again, what your credit card company charges you in GBP will be determined by the exchange rate that day - you will be billed in USD, not GBP).
If this is something you are interested in (and to be clear you are not committing yourself or ordering anything right now) let us know via this form and we'll keep you up to date and let you know once we're ready to roll.
Questions? Hit us up on twitter.
We're excited to open applications for the School of Supernatural Life once again. If you want your life changed, if you want to go deeper with Jesus and experience the love of God like never before then head over to the website to find more and then fill in the application. The school starts this September, but don't wait to apply. And, if you are a graduate from the school already, consider applying for year 2 that we are launching this year - it's going to be an amazing second year building on the foundation you learnt in first year. We'd love to have you come and be part of our community.
Find out more.