New Adventures!

We have been going non-stop the last several months. With Josh and Joy gone on furlough our work load has increased. We also had a new missionary family arrive in January and we have been helping them get settled in and deal with immigration.
We are also about to embark on a new adventure! God is moving us to the north shore of the island, to start a new work. So, we will be heading back to the States for a short furlough to raise a bit more support in August. When we come back we will be working in Puerto Plata.
We will also be short one child when we come back. Delayna is finishing up her 12th grade now (a year early) and will be staying in the States to work for a year before heading to college. She wants to be a doctor, so she is planning on going to Pensacola Christian College. She is also wanting to go on a missions trip to Peru with ACE in July (this will also be her Senior trip). She is trying to raise her money ($800) to be able to go. She is a very determined person and is working hard to get the money.  If you would like to help her with this, she is selling some more of her paintings. She is also accepting donations. :) Here are the paintings she has for sale. Please let me know if you are interested.

Family photos and a church need

The first Sunday in December we always do a family picture day. This usually gets some of the family members of our church members out for a service. This year Stu added backgrounds to out pictures and they turned out really good! Here is ours.

 

 

If anyone is interested in a special Christmas project (you can take advantage of those after Christmas sales!), we have a few small needs for our church that I thought I would share. We need kids scissors for our S.S. classes. We are also needing some puzzles and games that could be used at the end of a class to give the kids something quiet to do until the adults get done. They would be fore ages 5-10. The games would have to either be simple games that I could write out the instructions in Spanish or some that were already in Spanish.

November

We have been doing a lot of catching up since we got home from the hospital so I have not had time to post anything. Stu was released from the hospital on the evening of October 22nd. We didn't have our car there, so we were going to call a taxi. BUT GOD....sent an angel. :) Our neighbor showed up just as we finished getting everything together and he drove us home. What a blessing it was not to have to ride in a taxi. Stu had to stay at home for a week, taking it easy until his follow up visits. It was hard to keep him still! He answered the phone one day and it was for me. I was outside taking care of something and he called out the window of the office that it was for me. I picked up the phone as he was walking back to the bedroom (I was downstairs and he was upstairs) and heard a crash! Well, I was very jumpy still because of the accident so I threw the phone down and took off running upstairs (stubbed my pinky toe on the way). I found him laying on the floor in the hall. He had tripped and was not able to catch himself. I got him up and back into bed and told him for my heart's sake to please stay there! The next morning I was in the kitchen with Juls and I was looking at something on her back when her head went down on the microwave. I asked her what she was doing and then her head went up and banged back down on the microwave so I grabbed her arms to turn her around to see what was going on and she went limp. Thankfully I was able to lay her down on the floor. At first I thought she was having a seizure but quickly realized she had passed out. As I was telling Stu about it a little bit later, I finally lost it and started crying. I guess the stress of everything had finally gotten to me. I did take her to the doctor and her heart rate was slower than normal and a bit off but the doctor thinks it was post traumatic stress since she had helped me take Stu to the clinic after the accident. She seems ok now. Stu was cleared by all the doctors and is doing better but is still having a few problems. He is still having headaches, but not as many, and still has some jaw pain. His short term memory is VERY SHORT, worse than before. He also has problems getting what he is trying to say to come out right. And he can't focus well when there is a lot of noise or a lot of different things going on at once.
 Please keep praying that these things will get better quickly, especially since his load is about to double. The Wessons are leaving for a 6 month furlough on Tuesday. Please keep me in your prayers to as I will have to start driving the Wednesday night route and it is not a safe time of the year to be out on the roads after dark.
Seth took up the offering in church for the first time ever. When Bro. Josh called him name, he looked up with such surprise on his face and all the people went, "ahhhh". :) Stu was up front in a classroom with a sick headache, trying to get ready for his class, so he missed it.
We have also been fighting a war the last month. We have been overrun by biting ants. They are everywhere!!! They have even been in our beds. For some reason they like to bite Jesse's eyelids, so he wakes up with swollen eyes for a few days. We have sprayed and put out every kind of poison possible but we still have them. They disappear from one room and show up in another. Then we realized that we have rats again too. Stu got one with his hockey stick and we got two more with poison. I just want to be able to go in my kitchen to cook and not have ants or rats joining me! Jesse is scared to go downstairs by himself because of the rats. If anyone has any suggestions for me, I would love to hear them!

Surfing accident

This is the whole story of Stu's accident. It is as much for us to have a record of as it is to inform anyone who may not have heard. 
Friday, October 18th, we were at the beach and Stu was heading out in the water with another guy to surf. On the way out a wave came and the other guy lost control of his board and it hit Stu in the face and knocked him out, the problem is that none of us saw it happen. We are not sure how long he was under the water. I had looked out and saw Stu's back, it looked like he was bending over with his head under the water. I thought maybe he was fixing the strap on his ankle. Finally the other guy realized that Stu wasn't there and went looking for him. I saw him pull him up out the the water and realized that something was wrong and took off into the water (I don't swim). On my way out, I yelled to Juls that something was wrong with daddy and to go the the restaurant and get help. I also yelled to Delayna to watch the boys and yelled to them to get out of the water. There was only one other person on the beach so I yelled for him to help. I got to Stu and we started carrying him out of the water.  We were able to get Stu into the shore, but the time I got there I was so exhausted that I could hardly stand up. He had come to and was yelling, but had no idea where he was or what happened. He had a hole in his cheek with blood going everywhere, we got a towel on that and he started coughing/vomiting up water. Juls brought two guys from the restaurant and they helped me get Stu into the van and the one guy led me to the clinic. I took Juls with me to help and left Delayna and the boys at the beach. He coughed up water the whole way there and asked about every 2 minutes where he was and what happened. We got him to the clinic, a small 2 room clinic with no back up power, and they started hooking him up to an IV and oxygen. They had me ask him some specific questions to see what he remembered. He knew who we were and where he lived but he didn't know what town we were in or why we were there or what happened. At one point, out of the blue, he started singing "I saw the light" (of course he doesn't remember it) and I told him to stay away from the light! They gave him some meds, took an x ray of his chest and got him into a room. I had Juls call the manager of the villa we were staying at to see if he could go get the other kids from the beach. He was more than happy to help. The kids of course were very scared and crying. Juls kept asking if Stu was going to be ok. So he got the kids back to the villa and got them something to eat (we were supposed to be leaving Saturday morning, so there was no more food left). A man that we had met while we were there, came to the clinic to help us. He talked to the doctor for me and let me know what was going on. God does provide help even when you are in a town where you have no friends or family! They got his face sewn up, which he didn't enjoy! Sometime after that he started remembering things. He now remembers everything except for from about 5 minutes before the accident until about 3 hours afterwards. We stayed the night there but didn't sleep much at all. Every 30 minutes his oxygen machine would go into a high pitched beep until we reset it. Plus the power went out and since they had no back up, we were very hot and uncomfortable. 
On Saturday, my birthday, after talking to many people and feeling very stressed because the kids were alone in the villa and I was trying to go back and forth to take care of them and Stu, we were able to get him transferred back to Santo Domingo. Me and the girls were able to pack up and load the van with the help of a Canadian couple we had met. After they loaded Stu in the ambulance, we headed out. A friend met us halfway and took over the driving since I hadn't slept or eaten in two days. 
Being back here we are well taken care of, the hospital is much better and we have many friends to help with the kids. He did get an infection in his lungs but it looks like that is clearing up, they are just concerned about a couple of other things. His CAT scan results were normal and nothing was broken or dislocated in his face. If everything is looking good tomorrow, he might get to go home. I know that he is ready, although he will still have some healing to do. He still gets tired very easy and has quite a bit of pain in his face and head. Thank you all so much for the prayers. We appreciate them so much!!!

Vacation Bible School

We survived VBS! Before the week started we kept talking about VBS and the boys asked if they got to go. We said yes and they got very excited, "yay, we get to go to VBS!" Then Jesse asked Seth, "What's VBS?" and Seth said, "I don't know!".
We had from 100 - 150 kids each day. We only planned for 100, so I had to scramble to come up with extra crafts each day. We had several saved and we had half of the kids and some of their parents come to church on Sunday. It was a good week but I am glad it is over. :)

My Girls' Adventure!

My girls made it safely to Toronto today, although without their suitcases. :) They are hoping to get them tonight or tomorrow. I guess the suitcases took a different flight. This is the picture I received of them enjoying Tim Hortons and of course I noticed the Walmart bag right away!!! Their adventure has begun.

A trip!

The girls are going on a trip. They leave on Wednesday (please pray for them as they travel alone) to go to Canada to spend 2 weeks at camp and then they are going to the States to visit both sets of grandparents. They have worked to raise their money for the tickets. Thanks to many of you buying her paintings, Delayna was able to raise all of her money. They are very excited. I think Jesse wants to go to because he was hiding in Delayna's suitcase. :)