prayer letter sent out January 5th

Dear friends and partners in prayer,

Hello and Happy 2009!

We were going to send out a prayer letter today to give you details for you to be able to pray for us on our upcoming trip to Indonesia on Saturday. Our plans are to leave this Saturday (January 10) and be in Indonesia for two weeks and then a few days in Singapore until we come back on the 31^st. We both have been waiting for years to visit this country, to be able to see how the Lord might have us be a part of what He is already doing in the hearts of the people there. Within the next year or so, we plan to move there for a few years.

Something, however, has come up today that may be a cause for Faye not to go on the trip.

Many of you may know that we are expecting our first child in early April. We are definitely excited! Right now, Faye's is healthy and the baby is kicking and doing lots of flips in her tummy.

We have been doing everything to prepare to leave and today we had an appointment with our midwife. We went over the results of our last ultrasound. She said that pretty much everything looked normal, but there is one part that concerned us. Because the baby kept moving during the ultrasound, the technician wasn't able to get the best pictures of the baby's head. As a result, the radiologist said in the report that he wanted more testing done because there may be some sort of large abnormality/growth in the back of the baby's head or neck.

Our midwife told us that everything could be perfectly fine, but she ordered a more detailed ultrasound of the baby's head to rule this out. If, however, they do find some abnormality there is a chance that Faye might not be able to go on the trip. This, she said, is because there is a higher chance for pre-term labor in babies with abnormalities and also because they might want to run more tests to see exactly what might be wrong with the baby. The first available appointment is on Thursday…and we are supposed to leave on Saturday morning. The good thing is that we would know right then and there at the appointment from the perinatologist whether she can stay or go.

This is laying heavy on Faye's heart right now and she is fighting discouragement and worry. We both really want our baby to be healthy and also want to have all of us go on the trip. For the past few days also, King has been coming down with a cold. We honestly don't know how he got sick. We are seeing these as part of a spiritual battle to damper our spirits and lose hope.

Keep us in prayer and pass this on to those whom you know will be praying for us. We are convinced that there is nothing that is impossible with God and if there is something wrong with the baby, He is more than able to heal before our appointment on Thursday morning.

We will keep you posted with updates as soon as we find out more information.

Trusting that God cares and is able,

Faye and King