The Wall household has been staying extremely busy of late. This past weekend, we had a staff retreat to plan out the coming year for Christian Challenge and FCA. Both days, we went overtime by about...a couple of hours or so. It was good though. We are jam packed for the coming year with tons of activities and opportunities to connect with students. We are pretty stoked about it.
We just pray that the Lord helps us raise our full support so that we can be on campus this fall in time to get the ministry rolling for the semester. If not, we will probably have to cut back a lot of the things planned out. We also pray that Josh, our ministry team member, will have a clean bill of health and not require surgery on his heart late this summer. If he ends up needing surgery, he will be bed ridden for possibly 3 months. That will also change things up if that happens. In the end, we just have to be flexible to the circumstances that play out and flexible to how the Lord leads us.
Speaking of medical stuff, Rachel and I have a huge praise report. As many of you know, this past February, I had my appendix out. It was quite a surprise to us. I guess nobody ever really plans on having it out. Sparing you all of the details, after being sick for a day and a night, I had Rachel google appendicitis. Turned out that my self-diagnosis was right.
I knew something was up because I never have flu like symptoms. I might have had the flu once when I was 5 or so but other than that, I've been immune to it, thank the Lord. Plus, the flu is not extremely painful that I know of. After looking it up, Rachel came back to me and told me we needed to head to the ER.
Hours later, I was without my appendix and stuck with a big hospital bill. Now, Rachel and I have insurance but it's more the kind that protects you from going in huge debt if something catastrophic happens to you. That means we have a very high deductible in the thousands but everything after that is covered. Well, when you are transitioning from seasonal jobs to a job in ministry that requires fundraising, even thousands can be a huge burden.
We have been praying for months that we might be able to work something out with the hospital. It has been a long stressful process to say the least in trying to work something out. I guess the length of the ordeal just gave us more time to pray about it. Technically speaking, they don't have to help anyone out. They can charge whatever they see fit for the most part. We just hoped that we could work something out whether it was a lengthy payment plan or maybe, they would take some off the price. Today, we received out answer. Instead of having a bill of $3,000, they knocked it down to $300. Praise God! What an answer to prayer! We are so thankful we serve a good God! We are also thankful for all of those who covered us in prayer during this time. Wow, I just feel so blessed.
So what's up next for us? Well, I will soon be heading off to a director's conference with collegiate minsters from all over the state. I'm not really sure what to expect from it. When I return, Rachel's parents come to town for a few days. We then will head back with them up to Colorado Springs for awhile to focus on raising support up there. We already are lining up appointments and dinner meetings with people and churches up there. We hope to have more set up by the time we leave so if your interested in meeting up with us to hear our presentation, please let us know.
After Colorado Springs, we are back to Durango for a bit. We are praying about me having another surgery to fix some major sleep apnea problems I have been dealing with. I guess Rachel probably deals with them also at night with my snoring keeping her up. With our deductible already met from my last surgery, I may be able to have the surgery pretty much free. They would just have to fix my deviated septum and cut out my uvula and possibly tonsils. Not a huge surgery but still want to pray about it and make sure it's a good decision. From what we've found, it doesn't always fix things and has some downsides. It's something to think about. Please be praying that God gives us discernment concerning the procedure.
Following that, we head back up to Colorado Springs to meet with more folks if possible. On the tail end of that trip, there is a conference on discipleship I will be attending with Rachel. From there, we'll to head to Kansas City for a couple of weeks in hopes of connecting with some folks from my old stomping grounds. We don't have any support presentation meetings set up just yet but we know that the Lord will provide. While there, we hope to not just meet with individuals but also churches, Sunday school classes, small groups or even dinner party groups. If you're interested in setting something like that up, please let us know. We would love it!
From KC, we head back to Durango just in time for the athletes to start arriving. Soon after that, the new freshmen start arriving and moving into the dorms. It's an exciting time. There are so many ministry opportunities to be had! Keep praying for Fort Lewis College!
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