Asher is home! (amazing discount)

Asher came home yesterday (Wednesday). He looks rough, but we are praying for a good recovery. He is on SO much pain medication, and he has to wear the crappy cone around his head. Poor kitty. You can see his many stitches in his hip. His leg will possibly be lame for life, but we're hopeful that he'll be able to use his leg more than that.

Our new vet continues to amaze us. They are an amazing group of people who have really been a blessing to us during this procedure. The cost of this procedure was supposed to be $800, and they gave us a flat fee of just $500 because the wanted to help us. Well, we found out that, due to some complications, the actual bill of the procedure was closer to $1,300, and yet the still only charged us the $500 flat fee. God was using this veterinarian to be His blessing to us! Just look at all the asterisks and the discount amount on our final invoice.

Our God is So Good.

Update On Asher & God's Provision

We found out on Monday that the procedure to re-attach the broken hip bone is not a common procedure in cats. For some reason, the success rate isn’t that great. Instead, something called an FHO (Femoral Head Ostectomy) is performed, where the ball joint (that was separated from the leg bone) is removed from the socket, and the joint is left to heal. Asher should regain close to full mobility, after about 5-6 months. It goes against how I thought joints and muscles should work, but a quick Google search found many others who said the procedure worked for them

Amazingly, God has still showed himself through the vet. The procedure should costs upwards of $800, but Asher’s doctor, knowing that we can’t afford much for our baby, agreed to do the procedure in-house for a flat fee of $500. Anyone who has ever taken an animal to the vet knows that costs quickly add up, so performing the procedure for a flat fee is the veterinarian taking a loss to service our beloved Asher. If anyone is looking for a good animal hospital (this one is located in Indian Trail), I have a great one to recommend.

The procedure was performed on Tuesday. Asher stayed in the vet through the night, but on Wednesday he wasn’t doing too well. We just got an update this morning (8:30am) that he started eating again, and that they were going to do some physical therapy today, run his blood-work again, and that he might get to come home today. This is good news, because we miss our little boy.

Even though a $815 unexpected vet bill ($315 + $500) wasn’t something we wanted to do at the moment while trying to raise funds for Liberia, God has demonstrated that he provides.

Our trip contributions now total $1,950, thanks to some new donations that we received, and Graybrooke work has been steadily increasing as well.

To God Be The Glory.

FAQ 1 - Why Support Children in Liberia When We Have Issues Here?

Some of our posts will begin to answer some of the questions we have heard from folks about our mission trip to Camp 4, Liberia. This is the first of such posts, addressing "Why Support Children in Liberia When We Have Issues Here in the US?"
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CHILDREN OF THE MOUNTAINS
There was a special that aired this past Friday night called “A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains”. It was a 20/20 documentary by Diane Sawyer that detailed the lives of families in Appalachia, specifically Kentucky (If you missed it, you can view it here). There is a high school senior they document who is a stellar football player, the star of the team, who sleeps in his pickup truck each night. Another scene documents two sisters who live in a broke-down trailer while their mom dips back into prescription pain killer addiction, spending any money they do have on pills. Yet another segment shows how young men follow fathers into the coalmines to make what living they can, having lost most of their teeth due to their high consumption of Mountain Dew.

Some of the feedback we have received while fundraising for the Liberia Mission Trip has questioned the notion of sending money to children in another country when we have our own issues here in the US. It is almost a valid point, yet naïve & ill-informed.

The children of the Appalachian Mountains are certainly an impoverished group of people when compared to you and me. But poverty is relative. The United States contains the majority of the wealth in the world. Africa, by comparison, houses the world’s most-impoverished people. The average annual household income in the US is $44,970, compared to just $140 in Liberia. The percentage of children under five who have severely underweight is 14%, compared to 0% here in the US. The number of children in Liberia whose growth has been stunted from the lack of proper nutrition is 39%, compared to just 1% here in America. I compiled a chart with some additional comparisons below:

(click image to enlarge)

There are certainly tough times in America – many of us have experienced financial pain first-hand. But consider this: when the US get’s a cold, the world gets pneumonia. The financial burdens we feel here are only exacerbated in Liberia and other third-world countries. We are still King and Queens by comparison.

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke

Asher (our cat) Hit By Car, & Personal Responsibility

Friday night, our 8-month-old cat Asher was apparently hit by a car in the neighborhood. Asher didn’t die, which is certainly a blessing, but he did get hurt. He came up to our back door wanting in, which is normal, but when he came in, he hoped on three legs as best he could until he collapsed on the floor. He was crying out in pain. It was heartbreaking.

It was after 8pm, so our normal vet was already closed for the day. I called Brooke at work, and explained that I thought his leg was broken or dislocated. Brooke called the emergency animal hospital where we found out it would cost us a few hundred dollars just for a visit and x-rays. Since we are in the middle of fund-raising for our mission trip, we didn’t feel this was a wise expense, even though we wanted to take care of our little kitty. We decided to wait until our regular vet was open Saturday morning, so we prayed over Asher, and did our best to keep Asher comfortable through the night.

Saturday morning we could tell that Asher wasn’t doing any better. He was still crying out in pain, and his right, rear leg appeared to be just hanging. We called my dad and asked him what he’d do. Knowing how frugal my dad is, when he said he would take Asher to the vet, we knew we had to go.

We got in a last-minute appointment where the vet took x-rays, and we discovered that Asher’s leg had broken where the ball meets the hip socket. How painful! We learned that it could not heal on it’s own. The vet sent us home with a $315 dollar bill, some pain meds, and a decision to make: we can amputate the limb, have a surgeon repair it for $3,000, do nothing and let the leg be useless, have a practitioner perform an operation where he would put pins in the bone to let it heal for around $700, or just put Asher to sleep.

Back home, we watched as Asher tried to walk, collapse, drag himself across the floor, and collapse again. We knew what we had to do. When we adopted Asher from the animal shelter, he became a part of our family, and we agreed to take care of him as best as we could. Even though we don’t have the money, we are opting to have the practitioner perform the operation; it’s the only option we can come up with that will give us a clear conscious at the end of the day. It’s called personal ethics responsibility, and that’s what we have to do. Financially, it also makes sense: put Asher to sleep for another $100, which would have brought a total of over $400, only to have nothing to show for it. The total costs, after the vet visit, will be just over $1,000, but at least we will have our cat back. $400 for nothing, or $1,000 for our cat.

Brooke is going to pick up some extra shifts at the hospital, and any extra work I can get will help too. You do what you have to do.

Now where did I put that VISA card?


"Doing the right thing often costs us something....that's why it's called the right thing, and not the easy thing, or the cheap thing"

Vaccinations for Liberia (many)

We’ve known since the beginning of the preparations for the Liberia Mission Trip that we would have to be vaccinated for a number of illnesses that we have overcome here in the States. Diseases like Malaria, Typhoid, Hepatitis A, Polio, Hepatitis B, Tetanus-diphtheria, Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), and Yellow Fever are still rampant in the parts of Africa we will be traveling to. These diseases have never even entered my mind here in the US; I’ve not offered up even an afterthought to catching any of those illnesses. Malaria is one of the biggest killers in Africa, and the single biggest killer in children under five. Incomprehensible, considering that mosquito nets and medicine are available for less than $10 bucks per person. I’ve taken so much for granted living here in the “land of plenty”.

Brooke and I are contacting JAARS, one of just a handful of missionary centers around the US who focus of Bible translation and who send missionaries around the world. Even though we are not going on this mission trip through JAARS, they can help administer the necessary vaccinations (and we happen to be just 10-minutes from the JAARS location!). We have discovered that it will costs around $1,000 for us both to be vaccinated, and unfortunately insurance will not cover the cost, since there are vaccinations required for international travel, and not domestic living. It seems that nothing about this process comes without a cost.

An Incredible Update

On Saturday, as we were preparing our second newsletter mailing for the Liberia Mission Trip, an amazing thing happened. We met an older gentleman, probably in his upper 70s, and we were telling him about our desire to serve the orphans of Africa. We talked to the man (whom we had just met) for probably 5 minutes.

15 minutes later, this man walked up to Brooke and handed her something. It was some money to go towards our mission trip. She looked down at the wad of money and saw a $100 dollar bill! We graciously thanked the kind man. It’s really difficult to know how to respond when a total stranger hears your story and then unapologetically hands you money, only saying “when God tells you to do something, you do it.”

Later that night, on our way home, we took the hundred dollar bill out of our pocket, only to realize that there wasn’t just one bill….there were FIVE one-hundred dollar bills!

Wow.
A older man, whom we just met, just gave us $500 cash towards our Liberia Mission Trip.
That left us speechless.
Tears of gratitude seem like the only fitting expression.



This process is incredibly humbling.






(written by Josh)

WEEKENDS!!!

I'm moving to weekends! My schedule has changed or is shortly. As of February 15 I'll be working 7a-7p every Saturday and Sunday....which means I'll be off Monday thru Friday!! I'll only be working 24 hours, but still get paid for 36!!! What a sweet deal. Anyway, I'm super excited, with school it will be so helpful. Also, Josh is pretty busy so I'll be able to help him with Graybrooke business some during the week. I can always pick up extra hours at work as well. We have a busy weekend, we were supposed to go spend the night in Albemarle, but Mom isn't feeling well. Hopefully we will get to see her tomorrow. Tomorrow is Charlie Godfrey's going away party, he is leaving for Liberia next week. Sunday we are celebrating my little sister's birthday. She was 5 on Tuesday. We went to celebrate at Chuck E. Cheese. We are having the family celebration Sunday. I'm excited! I hope everyone has a great weekend!