Deda

Greetings from Winston-Salem! I'm on Spring Break this week and drove to Southern Pines, NC about an hour southwest of Raleigh to visit with my grandfather (Deda.."dee-dah") who is having some health problems. Deda, his friend, and I drove to Winston-Salem today to get what should have been a routine biopsy on a nodule on his lung. Well, after they got the biopsy, the "hole" in the lung they took it from did not seal back up as quickly as they would have expected, and he has a pneumothorax (partially collapsed lung) that has been growing. He's been having a little chest pain with the pneumo, but it goes away when he sits up, breathes deep, and when he walks around. Unless he has more symptoms, they're gonna wait til the morning to do another chest x-ray.

To complicate things, he has a 5.1 (at most optimistic measurement, 5.5 at the worst) cm abdominal aortic aneurymsm; surgery is generally recommended at 5 cm. Since his aorta is so large, the stent they were planning to put in won't be large enough to grab the artery walls. So, rather than being able to do a minimally invasive surgery on the aorta, they're going to have to open up his abodomen and the artery to repair it. However, if the spot on his lung is cancerous, he has said that his cardiac surgeon won't touch the aortic surgery.

So either way, Deda may be close to dying and he does not know the Lord. I came to be here for support and also to hopefully share the gospel with him. It's going to be very hard since he is not supposed to be under any stress whatsoever, he has a tendency to get angry when made uncomfortable, and I'm very rarely with him alone. But I have been learning from the Lord that I have not been believing Him that He can or will help me in talking to Deda. I need to believe Him and not doubt.

"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does."--James 1:5-8

Please pray for me as I spend time with him this week. Currently, I'm staying at my Aunt and Uncle's house here in Winston and wearing my cousin's ultra comfy soccer pants and watching 24 with the fam and Shell's boyfriend. This family doesn't know Him either so you can be praying that the detour would be fruitful.