To Go or Not To Go, that's the question?? Being confident that God has our answer:-)

Gordy and I have been trying to decide whether we should take our vacation this year. You see Gordy celebrated his 20 year anniversary of working at REI last year and was awarded a 5 week sabbatical to take during that year, but since Luke was having so many challenges last year REI let us delay it to this year. We originally hoped and planned to take a trip across America, fulfilling our lifelong dream of going to Washington DC. But after Luke's last stay in the Hospital we realized that he is too "fragile" to go across the USA, so after much prayer and discussion we gave that dream up once again.

We have decided to go California instead, it will be warm there and only a 24 hour drive home if we need to get back quickly for an emergency medical need for Luke. We did something similar to this trip 5 years ago when Gordy had his last sabbatical. Our church is taking a missions team down to minister in Mexico at the end of June and we thought that Gordy, Isaiah and Amy could join up with the team in San Diego to go with them. I would stay in San Diego at a KOA campground with Luke, Lily and Ezekiel, Nicole Jacobs a very good friend of Amy's will stay there with me to help out with the kids. Amy will come home with the team after Mexico to prepare for her 3 weeks at our church camp, we will miss her but know that she needs to fulfill her commitments to the camp.

So God willing this is the plan: We leave on June 11th right after I walk the 12K Sound of Narrows in Tacoma, hoping to get out of town around noon. We stay that night in Yreka, CA, which will be about a 7 hour drive. The next day we get up early to go to church at Bethel in Redding, we will stay in Redding 3 nights, so that we can do some exploring around that area. We leave there on Wednesday to head down to a campground which is about an hour from Yosemite National Park, we will spend 4 nights there, then on Sunday we go to Anaheim. We plan to go to Disneyland all day Monday, we hope and pray it won't be too warm of a day so that Luke can join us at Disneyland. On Tuesday we go to San Diego, we stay there 9 nights while the missions team goes into Mexico. Once we leave San Diego we will take a day to get up to Eureka, CA which is on the coast, we spend the 4th of July there, doing lots of exploring at the Red Wood National Forest. We will then end our trip at one of our favorite campgrounds Whaler's Rest in Newport, OR.

We plan to get home on Thursday July 13th in time for two weddings that weekend. Then Gordy and I will take off a few nights the next week to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary, I'm sure we will both need a couple of days of rest after our vacation:-)

I'm sure some of you out there are sitting there thinking: Are you crazy?, wow, how lucky wish we could go, have you really thought about all the medical supplies and equipment you are going to need?, it's dangerous to go into Mexico right now, what if Luke get's really sick?, do you think Luke will tolerate that long of a drive in the van?, can you really afford to take a trip like that? Or perhaps these are just the questions that are going around in our heads. We will need to take lots of extra oxygen and I'm looking into getting a portable concentrator to take, we will have to be sure to take extra of all medical supplies, we have prayed about the team going into Mexico and feel a peace from God that He will protect our team, we have planned to take this trip for years now, saving money for it so we feel that we are able to afford it.

And yet we still have reservations about going, especially after the last few nights we've had with Luke, he's needing more oxygen lately at night and even some during the day time. We were hoping that we could get our faithful prayer warriors to join with us praying that God will give us a true peace about going, that God will keep Luke healthy the whole time we are gone, that God will keep the team safe in Mexico and me to be fine with the kids in San Diego while they are gone, that Luke will do fine on the long drive down there, that it won't be too hot the day we go to Disneyland so that Luke will be able to tolerate being outside the entire day, that this could be a fun time for our family, a time of no stress, with lots of laughter and joy. Would you be willing to pray faithfully for our family while we are gone??

I take Luke into two Dr. appointments today, first to his rehab Dr. to discuss his muscle relaxing medications and then to his Pediatrician to talk about getting prescriptions for exchanging his oxygen tanks while we are gone and for getting a portable oxygen concentrator. Luke will also have some blood work done, please be praying for good results.

Love in Christ,
Luke's Mommy Sue