Today's miracles

     We first saw Kari for the two or three days after surgery.  Now we're back in Denver, just 12 days after that surgery and we were stunned to see her progress!  All the tubes are out of her mouth and off her face and the bruises on her chin have almost disappeared.  She is bright and alert and beautiful and can whisper well even with the tracheotomy tube.  There seems to be mounting confidence that she will be able to breathe completely on her own, and the plan is to lower the ventilator setting each day.

     This morning she downed a mixed berry smoothie.  She told us she has more feeling now down to her wrist on both arms and even says she has some slight sensations in her legs.  She's reading the emails and cards we hold up to her and recognizing just about all of you who send her these wonderful greetings.  Keep it up.  If you haven't already, go to the Swedish Hospital website to send her and Aaron emails (address them to Karen Morris-Guzman, room 4277).  We pray for miracles, then when we see them, it's hard to believe them.  Or maybe we are just so overjoyed at God's goodness that we act like we can hardly believe them.  But keep praying and asking for complete healing.  Today Pastor Fowler annointed her with oil and asked for this in faith.  Her own tenacity and faith is such that the medical staff here are jockeying to get to take care of her, signing up days in advance to be sure to get her.  But no one, not even Kari, can get through this on her own faith alone, and she does tire easily still.  She herself recognizes what a long, hard road is ahead.  Please keep her and Aaron lifted up in these crucial days to come.  Rehab will be kind of like boot camp.

     Aaron is now 99.9% sure that he will keep Kari here in Denver for the rehab.  The Craig Hospital seems to offer by far the best program in the country.  Rehab could start as early as mid- next week and continues for 90 days, the last 45 of which is where they put her and Aaron together in an apartment and teach them how best to live together with her present condition.  Steps are being taken now to move them out of their present apartment in California, saving them a couple of months rent, and to begin the hunt for a more suitable, handicapped accessible apartment.  These are rare in the area where they live.  The two in their present complex are occuppied, so please pray that some housing will turn up.  While we marvel at her progress and pray earnestly for complete healing, we plan these other ways too.  That's the balance demanded:  believe completely, plan ahead carefully.  Pray for us in this as well.

     Besides the many visitors, I want to personally thank Kari's mother Karen Morris and brother Dustin Morris, who have been towers of strength.  Dustin has taken the lead in helping to figure out so many details.  He gives Aaron credit for being so strong.  We give him all the credit for being there side by side with him.  When Dustin told her that Aaron was probably going to keep her in Denver, she at first seemed so troubled.  We came to find out later that she thought she was moving to Denver for good.  She wants to finish school (she's three courses shy of her masters at Azusa Pacific) and continue working at Brookside Church.  With your help and prayers we hope she gets back to California around early November and begins on these dear tasks again.

 

--Richard R. Guzman