We are back together as a family! Pamala, Kirsten, Daniel and Ariela arrived in Kansas City the night of May 26. The following day was our anniversary so the timing was perfect.
We’ve located a house in Kansas City and plan to sign a one-year lease and move in the first week of June, Lord willing.
God was gracious in answering prayer and giving Pamala strength to pack up our house in Croatia as a single parent and get our belongings on the truck. The shipment is in process now of going by land to the Croatian coast where it will then be transported by sea to the States, and then by land to our house in KC.
There were many precious goodbyes and last visits Pam had with our Croatian and Roma colleagues. They were so helpful in helping get things moved out of the house.
Matthew is still waiting to hear the results from the neurogram he had done in San Francisco last month. We are eager to hear what this detailed image shows and whether it can demonstrate conclusively whether his nerves were pulled out of the spinal cord (avulsed) or only torn or bruised. He had another test (“sniff” test) and we are waiting for the final results of that, but it looks like it confirms that his diaphragm is not working at all on the left side. If you remember, this is important information since one treatment that has been offered is to reroute some of the nerves which currently go to his ribs for breathing, and yet he already has less ability to breath due to the damage to his phrenic nerve to his diaphragm.
Please pray for wisdom for Matthew to know whether or not to have surgery to reroute some intercostal (rib) nerves and/or the spinal accessory nerve, in order to try to restore movement to his shoulder.
We are still waiting to hear from the prosthetics company whether our insurance will cover the prostheses we would like him to have.
Even though separated by 7,000 miles, we were able to meet with the Bayash translators and our Bible translation consultant and edit their version of Luke chapters 17-19.
Thank you so much for praying for us a family as we navigate these changes, for Matthew’s healing and recovery and for continued fruitful progress on the Bible translations for Roma.
Todd & Pamala