UPDATING AT LAST

It has been a long while since I have blogged here and, with Roger's help I hope to rectify this and bring our blogging friends up to date with what has been happening in our lives since we went back to Australia for 10 weeks in August 2009.

Five days after we arrived in Melbourne we both visited our Doctors for routine check ups (we appreciated visiting our Doctors and being able to speak English after 3.5 years!!). When Roger came out of the Doctor's room, the visit was to change our lives forever. The Doctor suspected Roger had Motor Neurone Disease and gave him the name of a Neurologist to visit. We had to wait 2 weeks to get an appointment then Roger was examined by the Neurologist and he confirmed Roger was in the early stages of MND or ALS.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. (courtesy ALS Assoc. website http://www.alsa.org/als/what.cfm).

Roger has always had very good health, so this diagnosis came as a huge shock to us both and to our family and many friends. As you can imagine, it really put a dampener on our visit back to Australia, especially as time was taken up with more medical appointments and other tests. This meant that our plans to catch up with our many friends did not happen as we had expected, or was cut short (like our visit to Adelaide).

We both felt we needed to come back to Schopfheim, Germany which has now been our home for over 4 years. The photo above is from the summit of our nearest hill at 750m. We have many close friends here and we have enjoyed the ministry we have had here. We were feeling rather shattered and angry that God would cut this short, but now have come to accept that he has other plans for us and we trust him for each day and for the future.

We are in a good way at the moment and we are trying to take each day at a time, make the most of our time together, make the most of our remaining time here in Europe and we have even started dreaming about our future in Australia together and the things we might do, with however long Roger might have left on this earth. We really want to 'seize the day' and we want to continue to be faithful servants here on earth for our Heavenly Father.