OCTOBER....

      - Just back from visiting Eman in Atlanta where I stayed a week. While I was there Eman finished the last of his donated therapy hours with "Project Walk". As you know their SCI rehabilitation center very generously donated FIFTY FREE HOURS of therapy. He has been going there three times a week since he arrived in Atlanta and benefited extensively from the rehabilitative training. 

In addition to his visits to Project Walk he also exercises and trains daily with his 

brother Francis and with Larissa.

Various people have donated gym equipment and he has quite an good home set-up now where he is able to stretch, train and exercise. 

Physically he is still in chronic pain. The spasms appear to have reduced slightly but the rigidity in his lower body, particularly his legs is very extreme. This keeps him awake most of night and seriously disrupts everything he tries to do. His dosages of Baclofen have been regularly upped and he's been introduced to other alternate pain-reducing and muscle relaxing drugs but so far nothing seems to really work, merely to take some of the edge off.

While finishing the fifty rehabilitation therapy hours is a landmark, it is at the same time disheartening how little visible progress has been made. Eman continues to be largely bed-ridden, he spends about 7O% of each day in bed, moving around in his wheelchair is too agonizingly painful. 

An Atlanta based charity called "No Longer Bound" heard about Eman's situation and is donating a VEHICLE for Eman!!! A 7-seater Dodge Caravan with a special adapted chair for the disabled. This customized car-chair is remote controlled and allows easy access from wheelchair to vehicle. This will make Eman's trips to therapy much more practical.

Needless to say we were very touched to be the recipients of such a kind gesture. It is miracles like this that continue to remind us that God is in control. Sometimes we feel so discouraged and wonder where God is in all of this and then something will happen that is so miraculous or just too much of a "co-incidence" to write-off as "chance" - it gives us that bit of spiritual strength we need to keep on.

We read something beautiful together while I was there that I wanted to share with you, this passage touched our hearts deeply.

" He knoweth the way that I take" [Job 23:1O] Believer what a glorious assurance! This way of thine - this - it may be a crooked, mysterious, tangled way-this way of trial and tears. "HE KNOWETH IT".  The furnace seven times heated-He lighted it. There is an Almighty Guide knowing and directing our footseps, whether it be to the bitter Marah pool, or to the joy and refrehsment of Elim.  - Job saw, [in his hour of aggravated woe, when every earthly hope lay prostate at his feet] - no hand but the Divine. He saw that hand behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans -he saw it behind the lightning flash-he saw it giving wings to the careening tempest-he saw it in the awful silence of his rifled home. ... "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" Thus, seeing God in everything, his faith reached its climax when this once powerful prince of the desert, seated on his bed of ashes, could say, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him."