Update on Heather's Surgery

Heather's brain tumor was removed this week at the Mayo Clinic. Her recovery is going well, although she hasn't yet been able to speak. Please continue to pray for her, her doctors, friends and family. Click the button below for a link to her blog, which is being updated by her husband and her friend, Laura. Janice at 5 Minutes for Mom made the code for the button, which you can get here.

A Call to Prayer

I got up this morning thinking about the Homeschool Blog Awards and the health situation of one of its organizers, Heather at Especially Heather (she also designs for Swank Web Style). Heather found out this week that she has a brain tumor. She has an appointment on the 25th at the Mayo Clinic; apparently it usually takes 6-8 months to get an appointment like this.

BooMama is organizing a fundraiser to help offset the cost of the trip and medical expenses on April 18. Almost $10,000 was raised for Kelli earlier this year. Please pray for Heather, her family, and her doctors, and don't forget to stop by BooMama's next Wednesday. Donations are through PayPal, with a minimum donation of $1.00.

Bear ye one another's burdens...

Galatians 6:2: Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

This is a verse I really, really love. When I was president of our former homeschool support group I proposed it as our group verse, and it was met with overwhelming support. The group grew to embody the verse.

My pastor spoke on this verse Sunday.

Today is an opportunity to bear the burden of another, our sister in Christ, Kelli. The post beneath this one has more details if you're not sure of the situation. I urge you to visit BooMama's post today where you can make a donation for this worthy cause. I am trying to rush out the door to take my daughter quilting, but I wanted to send this reminder first. I will publish the sweet story of my kids' responses to this need later.

Call to prayer

There are some people who are really on my mind and I would like to solicit prayers on their behalf. You want to know the funny thing? I've never met any of these people, but then again, I've never met many of the people who comment on this blog and whose blogs I read. It just doesn't matter.

The first is a woman in my homeschool group. This evening I found out that a six-year-old girl in our group fell out of a three-story building. She was trying to repel out the window with bedsheets tied to her as she had seen in a TV movie. She fell, was injured, and later died and her funeral was on December 16th. Her mother is a single parent who also has an eight-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. I cannot imagine what this woman is experiencing. The mom's name is Susan and the little girl's name was Ariel.

The second is a friend of a friend. Her name is Muggs and she is a mother of five who was diagnosed about a month ago with a serious form a lung cancer which affects non-smokers; it is advanced. She survived Hodgkin's when she was a teenager. Because of the cancer experience she had years ago, they told her they cannot do radiation and they can't operate. She has begun chemo and she will have six treatments every three weeks, but they don't recommend additional chemo. Her family started a blog here where they post updates about her condition.

The third is Kelli, a wife and mother of two who is suffering from severe kidney failure in her one remaining kidney. Her need for a kidney transplant is seriously a life-or-death situation. Here is a summary which BooMama posted:

Kelli quit work several months ago because, honestly, work was no longer viable with her condition. Her family has their health insurance through her former employer, and that will run out at the end of this month. What I’d love for us to be able to do for her is to cover a portion of her COBRA payments so that she can be free from the worry of being cut off by her private insurance. We all know that sometimes when it rains, it pours - and on top of the COBRA pressure, Kelli’s facing some incredibly expensive post-transplant medicines, the adjustment to being a single-income family, and, more than anything, the realization that if COBRA doesn’t come through - and if she and her husband can’t show the ability to pay for part of the transplant on their own - she’ll no longer be a transplant candidate. Without a transplant, quite frankly, she will die.

Please visit BooMama on Tuesday to take part in the fund raiser she's organizing. I explained her situation to the kids on the way to church and they want to contribute, which touches me more than you can imagine. I'm always telling them not to throw away their money on gum and candy, so this is an opportunity for them to see that there are ways they can do good with it, no matter how little it may seem.

Please take a moment to pray for these three ladies and their families, and may the Lord bless you this week.

A Worthy Cause

Visit BooMama's post about Kelli's need for a kidney transplant and what fellow bloggers are doing to support her next Tuesday, January 16.