Quotations, Scripture memory plan, Using computer for prayer lists
Favorite quotations collected by Roger Doriot, plus plans he has developed for memorizing Scripture and praying systematically for missions and much more.
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Roger, Suzanne, Linda, Daniel (E-mail: roger.doriot@crossworld.org)
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Quotes (immediately below)
Scripture memory plan for YOU! (following quotes)
Computer prayer lists Use your computer for praying consistently!
Tim Ashley’s story (60 fall off cliff while trekking in Irian Jaya.) Dave Spinelli's account You HAVE to read this story to see how God took care of Tim! (May 28 update following Dave's story.)
Len's memorial service, Janie's later letter Continue to pray for the family.
Doriot Family web page Go to our main page Much more to
see!!!)
QUOTES
As sure as God puts his children in the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them.
God won't be looking for your medals, degrees or diplomas ..., He'll be looking for your scars.
Give God what's right ..., not what's left!
Trade God your pieces for His peace.
When you get tired talking to your friend about God ..., talk to God about your friend.
It's hard to stumble when you're on your knees.
"Will the road you're on get you to my place?" ... God
Make your eternal reservations now--- 'smoking' or 'non-smoking'?
A person who hungers for money will starve to death spiritually!
People are not your problem, they are your purpose.
Satan can't bring you down any further than your knees.
Life is fragile---, handle with prayer.
If you pause to think-- You'll have cause to thank!
The following from: POCKET WISDOM, Robert C. Savage (Minneapolis, Minn.: World Wide, 1984)
There’s nothing wrong with living a life of pleasure...if we get pleasure out of the right things. p. 93
To praise God for our miseries -- ends them. To praise God for our blessings -- extends them. p. 94
Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God. p. 95
To look around--is to be distressed.
To look within--is to be depressed.
To look to God--is to be blessed. p. 103
The sins of other people are like the headlights of an oncoming car ... they always seem more glaring than your own. p. 105
When you try to make an impression--that is precisely the impression you make. p. 106
The crowd is usually going the wrong way. Sacred and secular history indicate that it is usually God’s righteous minority bucking the crowd that is going the right way. p. 107
You are never fully dressed until you wear a smile.
Men and women chasing each other is what produces the human race. (Mark Beltaire)
We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.(Charles P. Swindoll)
Conceit is the only disease that makes everyone sick except the one who has it.
The problem with the average Christian is that he is just an average Christian!
Do you do your job each day well enough that you would hire youself?
Give your life to God; he can do more with it than you can!(Moody)
A man is always as young as he feels, but seldom as important.
Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.
Don’t grumble because you don’t have what you want...rather be exceedingly grateful you don’t get what you deserve!
Misc.
“He enters by the door who enters by Christ, who imitates
the suffering of Christ, who is acquainted with the humility of
Christ so as to feel and know that, if God became man for us,
men should not think themselves God, but men. He who, being
man, wishes to appear God, does not imitate Him who, being
God, became man. Thou art not bid to think less of thyself
than thou art, but to know what thou art.”
... St. Augustine (354-430)
"All is not lost when anything turns out contrary to your plans. Therefore do not allow your feelings of the moment to obscure your judgment, nor yield to depression as though all hope of recovery were lost." (Thomas à Kempis)
"God usually answers our prayers so much more according to
the measure of His own magnificence, than of our asking, that
we do not recognize His benefits to be those for which we
sought Him."
... Coventry Patmore (1823-1896)
Every committed Christian should get a copy, and reread occasionally The Pursuit of God, by A.W. Tozer. It is a classic, short, but insightful.
Here are a few excerpts:
“Acute desire (to know Him) must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.”
“God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination, and the divine sovereignty. ... Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.”
“The order and life of the world depend upon (the Voice of God), but men are mostly too busy or too stubborn to give attention.”
“Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity, and bluster make a man near to God.”
“The ‘layman’ need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister (or a missionary!). Let every man abide in the calling wherein he was called, and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry.
... Let a man sanctify (set apart, commit himself to) the Lord God in his heart, and he can thereafter do no common act.”
A SCRIPTURE MEMORIZATION PROGRAM FOR !
Steps that will CHANGE your life! Guaranteed!!!
1. Decide that systematic Scripture memorization and review is important enough to spend some time on regularly. (It certainly is! See Col. 3:16; Deut. 11:18; Josh. 1:8; Ps. 119:11; II Pet. 3:18; Ps. 119:93.)
2. Pray for God’s help in disciplining yourself to take the necessary time, and to keep at it regularly.
3. Obtain 3 x 5 ruled index cards to put verses on. Keep a supply of cards on hand.
4. Write (or type) verses you wish to memorize on your cards - the verse on the ruled side, and the reference in the middle of the blank side. Start with some key verses that you know of, or get advice from your pastor or a friend on a number of verses to start on.
5. Keep a list (perhaps in your Bible) of verses you read or hear which you would like to memorize. Write these verses on cards whenever you have time. (Always have some good verses written out on cards ready to be memorized.)
6. Begin taking a few minutes daily to work on memorizing Scripture verses. Start with five or six verses. You do NOT need to learn the verses immediately. Just spend some time going over them each day.
7. Mark a blank card “Daily Review” as a cover card for the stack of cards you are beginning to memorize. (Use a rubber band to keep the stack together.) Remember, you must review these DAILY, if only to read over each one carefully. Some days you may be able to spend more time on them, but don’t miss a day of spending at least a few minutes on them. You will find them getting more and more familiar until you have some memorized after two or three weeks!
8. Determine a schedule for adding new verses to your Daily Review to be learned. You may want to add one every third day for a while, or once a week. Just make sure it is regular! (You may add more often at first, then later change your schedule to add less often as you accumulate more verses and need a little more time for reviewing them.) Write the date you start to review each verse in the upper right hand corner of the side of the card with the reference on for that verse.
9. Mark another blank card “Weekly Review.” As soon as you have any verse in your Daily Review stack learned well (so that you can quote it and the reference several days in a row without looking , transfer that card to this new stack. Review the cards in this stack just once a week. Write the date each time you review these on the Weekly Review cover card, so you don’t forget when it’s time to review them again.
10. Mark another blank card “Monthly Review.” When you have reviewed verses in your Weekly Review stack once a week for a couple months or so, you will find that you can recall some of them very well each time you review, so you can now transfer those into this new stack to be reviewed just once a month. Again, write the date on the cover card when you go over these, so you can see when it will be time to review them again.
11. As you move more verses from Daily Review to Weekly Review, you may want to eventually divide your Weekly Review stack into smaller stacks for several different days of the week, so you won’t have to spend so much time on any one day reviewing those weekly review verses. Likewise, later on you will want to divide Monthly Review verses into several smaller stacks and review on different days of the month. (Eventually, you can have a Weekly Review stack for each day of the week, and a Monthly Review stack for each day of the month. At that point, you will each day be reviewing your Daily Review verses, some Weekly Review verses, and some Monthly Review verses. However, it still will not take you a lot of time, because you will know your Monthly and Weekly Review verses well, and you will still just be going over your Daily Review verses for a few minutes, not taking time to try to memorize any verses in just a day or two.)
12. You will probably want to alternate reviewing the verse and the reference every other time. As you review each stack, after you turn over each card to check whether you said the words or the reference correctly, leave the card turned over so you will be reviewing the opposite side the next time.
13. Quote the verses you have learned, or are learning, to others whenever you have the opportunity.
14. Never quit reviewing the verses you have learned until you meet the Lord in the air and He gives you permission to stop.
15. Encourage and help someone else (many others, if possible) to get started in this program also. It will make it so much easier for you to keep at it if you always have some friend doing it as well, and you pray for, encourage, and check up on each other.
THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE! YOUR LABOR WILL NOT BE IN VAIN!! START
In the past I have used various prayer lists as reminders to pray for lots of things for which I wished to pray. Since no one can pray for everything all the time, I developed lists for each day of the week, and for each day of the month, so I could pray for many things regularly, even though I couldn't pray for them all daily.
Now since I use my computer a lot and don't bother to open my Bible any more, because of the great Bible programs for the computer, of course :), I have also been developing a method to use my prayer lists on the computer. I have a file called PRAYER on which I list: 1) Permanent requests to be prayed for daily 2) Temporary requests to be prayed for daily (add and delete as desired) 3)Requests to be prayed for once a week - with some listed under each day of the week 4) Requests to be prayed for once a month - with some listed under each day of the month (01, 02, 03, etc.) 5) Other lists on various topics where I have one request for each day of the month - each request with its date: 01, 02, etc.
When I open the file each morning, I go over the daily requests, then use FIND and the day of the week to jump to my weekly requests for that day. Then I use FIND again with the day of the month (01, 02, etc.), which takes me to that day on my monthly requests, and then FIND NEXT as many times as needed to jump to that day's request on my various topic lists.
Of course, you can add new things to whichever list you choose anytime, change priority if you wish (change to weekly from monthly, from daily to weekly, or whatever), delete items you no longer have interest in, etc.
Contact me if you need further explanation, help, or examples.
Dave Spinelli's story of the accident
On April 28th, the second day of the trek, we left the village of Wamerek at 6:30Am, which would've been the evening of the 27th for most of you. The trail contoured across some very steep sections of the valley which led into the Baliem gorge. At one particular place, the trail contoured across the top of a very steep rock slab, with the drop-off on the left and rock slab continuing up on the right with a couple feet of trail in between. It was at this spot that Tim Ashley slipped and fell to the left, tumbling down the rock.
To be honest, my hands quiver and eyes tear up as I write this. We had 16 students, 5 staff and 20 men from Silimo who were accompanying us (a total of over 40 people) hiking on the trail that morning. I was in the very back when it happened, around a corner, so I did not see him fall. Tim was somewhere in the middle of the group and only two students actually saw him fall. It took more than a few moments for everyone to find out what had happened and for people to start to react.
The trail wound its way down towards the base of that very slab. I watched from above those in our group who were in the very front start to run towards the bottom of the slab, looking for Tim among the boulders, trees and shrubs. I broke into a panicked run, passing the people in front of me and as I passed over the spot where the guys were searching below I glanced out over the edge (I could not see the very bottom where Tim was) and having seen a climber fall and having read about many many climber falls I thought, "If someone has fallen down that, they're dead. No! We've lost a student. There's a dead student down there." At that moment I did not know who had fallen.
And so I prayed, and I ran. Jamie Waldron, a student from the same college as Tim and a close friend of his, was sitting in the trail with her face in her hands being comforted by Heidi Wisley, one of our staff. "It was Timmy! He tumbled down! I saw him hit his head!!!" she said with frantic urgency.
I had seen that the second person who was running towards the slab was our student, Matty Brown, who had worked on a ambulance squad for three years in England. Knowing that Matty would be able to handle at least the initial assessment and treatment I made the decision to not go to the scene, but rather to open up our trail radio and start calling for help on the flight channel. It took over a minute to open up the trail radio, open up the battery box, attach the battery and stretch out the 30 foot antenna, and at first it seemed that no one could hear us. It was a huge relief to finally hear, "Itu siapa??" which means, "who's that??"
The next huge sigh of relief came when I heard Buzz Maxey's voice come over the radio from Silimo. He could hardly hear me shouting into the radio, but he could hear me nonetheless and thus started to connect with MAF and Helimission pilots. There was no logical reason for the Maxeys to have had their radio on at that time, which was about 7:30AM. Their normal sched-time is 6:30 to 7:00 and they wouldn't even possibly use it again until 8:30 if at all again during the day.
"Dave, do you need a heli med-evac?"
"YES!" I screamed into the radio.
Within minutes a crew was preparing the helicopter in Wamena and the pilot, Brian Smith and his wife, Luanna, a trauma nurse, were on their way to the airport. Their sixteen-year-old daughter, Brianna, having heard what was happening on their radio at home, called a nurse and doctor who were soon standing by at the airport.
"Is there a place to land the helicopter?"
"YES!" I said by faith while standing on that slope which went straight down to the rapids of the Baliem River, not totally believing that a helicopter could really land there. But I said, "yes," half remembering one small single flat spot right on the bank of the river, right beside the small suspension foot-bridge. And so I sent down a group of guys with a couple of machetes to cut down the grass, a tree and move some rocks. After they had finished clearing the tiny area, I remember looking down at it and praying, not really believing it was big enough.
We rolled out our large orange tarp so that Brian could spot us easily from the air. I still did not know exactly what Tim's condition was. The next huge relief: a student brought news that Tim was conscious, alert and oriented. Unbelieveable. We gathered all the walking sticks (which had been made specificly for us the day before by a few Bible school students in Pyramid) and sent them up to where Tim was where they started constructing a litter to move him.
A MAF pilot who happened to be in the area flew closer so that he could relay information for us to the rest of the world. I was able to start giving more details of where we were, what had happened and Tim's condition: head injury, possible serious spinal injury, broken right lower leg, broken ribs on left side, broken right middle finger.
A different MAF pilot flew over Pyramid to alert Scotty Wisley to get on the radio. Soon I could hear Paul Burkhart, the head of The Mission Fellowship, from Jayapura. He was getting ready to call the insurace agency which specificlly handles emergency medical evacuations from overseas, which all of our students are required to have. A group of the guys from Silimo had already cut a nice wide trail from the place where Timmy had landed out to the trail which led down to the bridge.
Before long the helicopter appeared and I signalled it to our tiny, grass heli-pad on the bank of the raging river. And yes, unbelieveably, the helicopter was able to touch down there, with the very back of its skids on some large rocks which were the edge of the bank and its rear rotor hanging out over the river itself.
Brian took the helicopter back up and around temporarily and told us where to bring Tim. A group of the Silimo guys and our students together carried Tim down to the river bank. This was the first time I saw Tim. When he saw me, he smiled and immediately apologized for all the trouble. Together we thanked God that he was alive, conscious and doing well. When the helicopter came back, Luanna got out and gave us instructions on how to load Tim into the heli. Instead of transfering him onto the helicopter's stretcher, he was kept tied into the firm, make-shift litter and fit perfectly into the passenger compartment. Matty and Luanna hopped in. We shut the doors, scrambled away from the helicopter and watched them fly away.
In my little pocket notepad where I record the time of day and location of each stop I have written, "8:40AM Timmy left."
It's hard to know what to do with the remaining group of people after something like this happens, especially when you burst into tears when the helicopter finally leaves. A test of leadership. We actually finished the trek, knowing Timmy would want us to.
Within a couple hours Tim was in a world class hospital in Tembagapura (on the south coast of Irian Jaya, near the largest gold/copper mine in the world) with an Australian doctor focussing all his attention and staff on Tim. A very small window had opened up in the clouds allowing Brian to fly the helicopter into Tembagapura just before large storm moved in and poured on the whole area for hours.
Among all of these miracles, the most amazing one is this: among all the different x-rays that were taken, the doctors could not find one single broken bone, not one. They couldn't believe it. We couldn't believe it. Granted every ligament and tendon was torn apart in his right knee, but no broken bones. Matty, who had worked three years on an ambulance squad, said he would've staked his life on the fact that Tim had broken bones in at least those three areas of his body mentioned above, and who know what else internally?
It was difficult to try to estimate exactly how far Timmy fell. Some pictures were taken from a distance so as to be able to see the whole scene in one single frame. The most conservative estimate is to say that he tumbled down that rock face for at least sixty feet. Judging the height of the pillars of the bridge against the hight of the face, we could say without any exaggeration that he tumbled nearly one hundred feet.
Later that same evening Timmy was on special chartered med-evac flight to Darwin, Australia where they did further tests, cat scans, MRI's and x-rays. They eventually did find broken "fins" on his C7 and T1 vertebrae, but no other damage, internal nor skeletal, was found.
Tim is a Outdoor Recreation major at Houghton College. He was by far the most experienced student of the group in the outdoors, backpacking, rock climbing, wilderness emergency medecine, etc. His experience didn't save him from his fall. God did.
There's something rather refreshing about hearing sermons preached in the Two-thirds World. Pastors are wonderfully blunt and don't share the fears that we do concerning being politically correct and non-offensive all the time. In the village of Pasema, two days after Timmy had fallen, on Sunday morning, Matius, the leader of the group of Silimo men, expounded on this verse:
"Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left." Matthew 24:40,41
The Papuan people have a wonderful appreciation for each day, a wonderful appreciation for time. Each time anyone prays, he or she will always first thank God for giving us breath for that day, morning, noon and night, and for every day before. And so Matius reminded us that every day, even every moment that we have, is a gift from God and ought to be valued as such. And I can say that I was confronted with that reality. As far as I can tell, Tim should've been dead. He was given grace. But his life now is no more a gift from God than anyone else's. All of life, every moment, is always a gift from God. I have seen the proof.
Sorry this was so long, but, for all of you who are interested I included all the necessary details.
Special thanks go out to the Smiths, Wolfgang and Helimission (Ernie), Matty Brown, MAF and all the pilots involved, especially Bolser, Dr. O'Neil in Tembagapura, the Burkharts and TMF, S.O.S. - the spcial overseas med-evac network, Sue Trenier, Dr. Ating, the mission community here in Irian and of course all of you for praying. Thank you.
Please feel free to forward this around to whomever you might think would be interested (espcially to the people mentioned above to be thanked since I don't know most of their e-mail addresses!). Thanks!
I guess that's enough for one newsletter, eh? The semester ends on the 25th when we send the students home. Once again. Thank you for praying, and I mean it.
Grateful, oh so very very grateful,
Dave
May 28 update: Tim has now been allowed to loosen his neck brace, do most normal activities - nothing real strenuous - and report back to the doctor periodically. Incredible considering they thought he might have to be in a body cast for six weeks or so! Praise the Lord, and thanks for so many who prayed!
Author: "Tim Ashley"
My life chapters: Psalm 40 & 71 "...may your love and your truth always protect me..."
This is Tim Ashley and here's my story...
Before I begin please let me thank all of you who prayed for me and waited for signs of improvement. I'd like to let you all know that your prayers have been answered in more ways than you could possibly imagine. God is Great! Scotty, thank you, for everything. The rest of the staff (of Eduventure) also, because of your help everything went extremely smooth. I simply cannot possibly thank you enough. Love you all. Now I'll begin my story..
It was Friday the 28th, and we were hiking to Silimo and I was somewhat near the front of the group and the section of the trail we were hiking contained some rocks to pass over. I pulled out my camera and held it in my right hand and decided "Gee, wouldn't it be nice to take a picture of the group behind me." So I stepped on a fairly large flat rock for support and began to turn around, but as I turned weight was put on the left side of the rock and just lifted up and shoveled me off the path. Have you ever sat for a long period of time then stand up quickly and get very light headed and fuzzy-eyed for a minute? That's what it felt like. There was no fall, no knowledge that I was falling, I was just in the air. I don't remember hitting, but I do remember putting my right hand on the back of my head and pulling my head down till my chin hit my chest. "It's all in the tuck and roll". I went unconscious as soon as I hit, since the next thing I remember was very vaguely seeing all these people around me and my hand covered with blood.
At this point I would very much like to thank everyone who helped in my evacuation. Matty's the man, and Nate kept my attention going so I wouldn't slip away again. A group is a whole, and all must work as one. From there I remember being loaded into the helicopter thankful that I wasn't any taller or I wouldn't have fit. From there I was flown to Wamena and oxygen and IV's were administered. Then we flew to a hospital near Timika. Matty and Luanna were a great help to me during this whole ordeal. The pain through my body for the first couple of hours was so great that it seemed to numb me up. It's kinda like I peaked in the amount of pain a body can withstand (kinda cool). I was cleaned up and x-rays were taken of me revealing that I was fine and dandy with no broken bones. SOS International stepped in at this time;.they ran the show and ordered an immediate evac to Darwin, Australia as soon as possible. So a few hours later I said Goodbye to Matty Brown and was loaded into an ambulance to be taken to the Timika airport. Kirk met us there and he took that great picture of me at my prime beauty-time of the ordeal. A private Learjet was sent from Darwin with an SOS certified doctor and nurse to escort me over the big water. Luanna graciously accompanied me in the jet to make sure everything went well. I think this was around 10:30pm on Friday night.
We got to Darwin safely where we were met be an ambulance to take me to the Royal Darwin Hospital. We went straight to the ER and the doctors there did a great job keeping me entertained with all the tests they were performing on my aching body. Through all this my blood pressure remained at a perfect level and my heart-rate settled at 58 beats a minute. After a few hours down in the ER , I was done bleeding and all the blood that was seemed overwhelming was now cleaned off of me to reveal nice healthy skin.
About 4 in the morning on Saturday, I was brought up to the third floor to the Spinal Treatment ward and put on 35% oxygen and fed IV's through my right arm. For Saturday and Sunday I was bed-ridden with sandbags placed on either side of my head to prevent movement. They fasted me until Monday, so that was fun in itself. Every day since the accident the pain kept getting less and less, and more centralized to my right knee, left middle finger, and the back of my neck. Monday was great! I didn't need oxygen anymore, they took out my IV's and I was able to sit up at a 45 degree angle. They carted me to the x-ray lab and a CAT- scan was done on my spine to get a detailed image of everything. After that they looked me over and found only two cuts - one large laceration on the top of my right kneecap and one at the base of my right middle finger. Stitches were spaced to close the wounds and no other place on my body was a bandage needed. The x-rays came back later that day and this is the amazing part! Along your spine you have 19 spinal discs, 7 in the neck (C 1-7) and 12 (T 1-12) in the back. C7 and T1 were fractured in my spine, but the good news is that they are extremely stable fractures. The fractures flare out into the muscle, not inward. If they were inward an eighth of inch more, my spinal cord would have been punctured leaving me paralyzed from the neck down. God is Great! This is when I was introduced to my best friend, the neck collar. Snug and fashionable :) But the way the fractures are placed, full rotational motion of the head is capable without damage to the spine.
Monday night I was standing and walking slowly and able to digest water and Jell-O which was a miracle (one of many). Three days after the fall and I'm up and walking freely, not too bad considering the circumstances. Tuesday through Sunday were quiet and restful which was just what my body needed. I received many guests from the local churches and a Missionary Conference. News of my dilemma spread throughout Australia and people were traveling quite some distance to spend time with me and pray together with me. God's love knows no boundaries, leaving any distance not an obstacle. Physically my scars were diminishing and most of all my scabs began to fall off. The healing process I went through simply astounded the doctors and nurses and each day they were shocked by my progress. I had the opportunity to witness to many nurses who saw my fall and recovery simply as "luck". God used me in many situations just by being cared for in the hospital to reach out and plant seeds for His Kingdom.
Monday, May 8th, my stitches were removed, 6 days before expected. The laceration in my right middle finger severed the left-side nerve running up the finger so a fourth of my right middle finger is completely numb. They said that it's a very common surgery to fix separated nerves and that's expected to happen within the next few weeks. I have full extension and use of my right leg and right hand, basically the only slight handicap is the neck collar that remains on my neck. The entire left side of my body experienced no scars or bangs at all, leaving all the fun stuff to the right side, primarily the elbow, knee, and hand. I said my Goodbye's to all the nurses Monday night and I treated them all to pizza (spinal kid buying pizza for the staff - ironic, huh?).
Tuesday a SOS certified doctor and nurse came to meet to escort me to Sydney then to the U.S. I was loaded on a stretcher and securely fastened inside the plane and was flown to Sydney where I stayed at the St. George Private Hospital for the night. The one major downside is that I must remain on the stretcher when in travel at all times, that includes plane time also. That was a bummer. But for some twisted reason I always kept a happy attitude and I can't remember one time throughout this entire ordeal ever really complaining. I figured that this is how things have to be and by complaining I can't change anything. "Be a vessel for the body of Christ."- Barry Jordon Shine with God's love no matter what circumstances come before your path.
Wednesday was the big day! At 8:30 am I got onto my best friend, my stretcher, and was taken by ambulance straight to the jumbo jet at the Sydney Airport. I knew that I would be on the stretcher for quite a long time, so I mentally prepared myself and prayed many times for strength throughout this long journey. We flew for eleven and a half hours to L.A. from Sydney, then a five hour wait on the runway for clearance for takeoff, then another good distance too, the JFK Airport in New York, then an ambulance to UCONN Medical Hospital just outside of Hartford, Conn. The entire time I was on the stretcher was a total of 26 hours. From Sydney to Connecticut.
The doctor at UCONN ran a series of x-rays on the movement of my spine in my neck this morning (Thursday the 11th). At 1 pm he came back to the room and told be to go home and enjoy myself. There's no negative effects from the movement of my neck. I have to keep the collar on for four weeks non-stop, lift or push nothing more than ten pounds, and no extreme activities ... Bascially I'm prescribed to take it easy and rest for a month with no hard manual labor. I can do that! After the four weeks I'll go back for x-rays and a chance that the collar can come off and a step up on the activity level can be taken.
The number of lessons from this experience exceed more than I can count. The Lord has definitely used this in many different ways and He has a plan for me in the end. I've learned not to ask the "Why?" question and simply give my life fully to God. How many times do we fight the current of God's plan for our lives. Trust in the Lord and he will renew your strength and provide for you in everything that comes in your way. He will never put anything before you which you can't overcome, ... with His help. I love the Lord with all my heart and "I will always sing of your love forever."
Thank you again for your prayers and please feel free to disperse this to anyone who has been sharing in my struggle over the past couple weeks. I'm sure I left out a lot, so feel free to ask questions and I'd be glad to spill my heart.
Let me end by saying I went on Eduventure to learn more about what God wants for me in His vast eternal plan. I definitely learned it. Fully give yourself to Christ, and His love will be with you no matter what you go through. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough worries of it's own. (Matt. 6:34)
Worship is a never-ending process, keep singing in your heart always! He deserves it!
In His Grip,
Timothy Louis Ashley
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