The Power of Prayer

I don't want my blog to become a site where I bog you down with all that is going on in my life.  I want it to be an encouraging place, but tonight I really ask for the many prayer warriors that I know follow my blog to come into God's presence.

Last Saturday a 10 year old boy in our church, Ryan, was taken by ambulance 3 hours to Iowa City for emergency surgery.  The weather was terrible, and it was safer to go by ambulance than helicopter.  His appendix had ruptured a few days before without any of the normal symptoms.  He had even been to a doctor that week.  Because Ryan's burst appendix let out all of those toxins to sit until it was taken care of, he is an incredibly sick child. He also had a (excuse my lack of medical terms) ball of infection near the appendix. They did the surgery Sunday morning, but last evening--Tues., he was rushed back to surgery due to a hole in his colon caused by the toxins eating away.

We were able to go down last evening and spend some time with them.  We took their other son back to the Ronald McDonald house so that they could both stay with Ryan.  This morning and all of today Ryan has been very sedated.  He has now developed a skin infection.  I will not go into any more details.  It is a very long and intricate story.  His parents have more decisions that might need to be made tomorrow as this other infection may need to be treated if it does not stop spreading.

It has been such a long week, and they are almost 3 hours away from their church family.  They do have some Christian friends who live an hour away, so that has been a blessing.  It will be a few weeks until Ryan is home.

Please pray that this skin infection goes away tonight.  If it does not, they might have to cut more of the skin with the idea of doing a skin graft later.  This will add more pain to the area that is already incredibly painful.  Please also pray for his temp to go down as it has been fairly high today.  His parents are Darin and Sherry.  His older brother is Nathan.  Ryan is a very active child.  It was hard for Dan and I to see him so sedated today, so I cannot imagine what his parents are going through.

I have lots of other things to put on here.  Hopefully tomorrow I will have the time to get them on.

Another thought....Sunday Dan preached on prayer.  It was a great sermon.  I'm hoping that this will put the thought even deeper in people's hearts.