So....what do you think? Did any of these pictures turn out?
This, by the way is our new house.
In the last few days/weeks we've been looking at 'Healing Homes' or what exactly to do next....and a lot of things divinely lined up for us to go live beside/with Frank and Anne Marie in the suite attached to their house. (The time frame of this move isn't determined yet, most of our stuff is still in our old house...this all happened pretty quickly) We love being around hope filled people. I've seen a fun change in Ramona in the last 48 hours or so. Her digestive system is starting to work again. Her spirits are much much higher than when she dictated that last blog to me. Thanks for going after complete healing with us!

Round 23 ended early. Although that may sound good....it's not. We got the results of my CT scan. Dr. Wong said it wasn't good. I interrupted him because I didn't want to know how bad it really was. I asked if the tumors in my lungs had grown significantly and he said "yes". This means that the chemo I've had for 23 rounds isn't working anymore, and so there was no point in me finishing my last day there. What's the plan? I don't know. Dr. Wong said I could just go home and give up or I could try a new outpatient chemo in three weeks. He has no guarantees that this will do anything.

I'm freaking out because I have a hard time breathing. These results weren't really a big surprise. I have chest pain and difficulty breathing constantly. There are times when I feel like I need an oxygen tank.

I know God wants to heal me just as much as before...it just feels like time is running out. I truly don't know if I'll be alive in three weeks. Please pray for us. Pray for peace and direction and God's healing. Also, pray for our friend Jason, he's still fighting for his life in the Minnedosa hospital.

After getting rid of my hair, we're on the way to the hospital for chemo round #23! (And don't worry, the mohawk is gone already) :)

Hockey & Camping

Last Thursday Earl & I went to a fundraiser hockey game at the MTS centre that was raising money for cancer. The fundraiser was started by a young man who was battling synovial sarcoma. He passed away in 2006 and since then the fundraiser has been growing annually. A bunch of big names were playing so during the 2nd intermission, Earl Cook (who is in the picture with me) and I got to go into the dressing room. Here we saw Jordin Tootoo, Nigel Dawes, Jonathan Toews, Darren Helm, Travis Zajac, Ian White, Derek Meech, etc. The reason we had this special privilege is cause we're also battling sarcomas just like Todd, the founder. Earl, (as in husband) also got to come in. (Let's be honest, he cared about it a lot more than I did. :) ) I also was in an interview that should be put on the internet in about a week or two. I've never heard of anyone else in Manitoba with synovial sarcoma, so I guess that's why I was interviewed.

On Saturday, Earl & I went camping with my family. Rain and thunderstorms were in the forecast but we did some intense praying and God answered with beautiful sunshine!!





My bros are working hard, making toast. (Yes, I know my brothers are hot and yes, they both have girlfriends!!)

We played some hardcore lawn croquet in some seriously long grass. With just a little cheating, Earl & I came in 2nd!



Yesterday Earl & I went to visit our friend Jason & his wife, Aaron. Jason is in the hospital battling sarcoma. He has not been given much more time to live. Jason & Aaron have two beautiful children, Madison and Cole. We spent some time chatting and praying with Jason & Aaron. We asked them if they would be okay if we would mention them on our blog. Although Jason doesn't speak much anymore, he lit up and was open to all the prayer he could receive. They are asking for as much prayer as possible and so we are asking you, as our blogger family, to join us in praying for a miracle for Jason. I know that naturally many of us don't believe that he will be healed-it seems too impossible. However, the exciting thing is that nothing is impossible for God, he delights in doing the impossible-that is His specialty. He only asks that we have a mustard seed amount of faith. I know that my faith seems so small, however I am praying that Jesus heal His body in a miraculous way and that He would touch not only His body but also every inside part of him. May Jesus and His incredible love be made evident to Jason & Aaron. May they experience supernatural peace.

Thanks so much for all your prayers-we know that something happens in the spiritual realm that wouldn't have happened had we not prayed. Therefore we know that every prayer makes a difference-thank you!!

As for myself, this week I am finally feeling a lot better. Last week was pretty rough with stomach pain and no energy. I am still randomly throwing up and having a lot more pain in my right leg due to an infection, but overall I am feeling good this week. Earl & I hung out at the Forks tonight and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We love relaxing outside whenever possible and are loving this hot weather.

Thanks again for your prayers, support and encouragement. Have a great evening
Ramona

Bird's Hill

We went to Bird's Hill Park. It only rained on the ride there! Chemo begins this Tuesday night.

Ramona's pain is under control. In fact, there is almost nothing. She sleeps in bed instead of sideways on the couch. I like that.

Three years ago today...I was sitting in a small room with Ramona listening to a doctor tell us that Ramona has cancer...um...I'm not sure what to say about that...as I'm doing a quick mental scan...it feels like a lot of things have happened in that time. For some of you reading this, it means you've been battling for Ramona's health in prayer for three years...and again...thank you.

Our last few days here have felt pretty crazy. The round of chemo ended yesterday at around 4 o'clock. We went home, and when we got here, Ramona went almost straight to her bed. I'm not sure why the pain only started when we got home...maybe it's our stairs...anyway, almost immediately, her left leg was causing excruciating pain. We have a lot of powerful pain medication at our house, but we couldn't get her pain under control. I've seen her in extreme pain many times, but I'm not sure it's been that bad before. Finally at 7 p.m. we headed to the emergency room to try and get her pain under control. I believe this is the first time where the reason we headed to emergency for tumor pain. Finally by 10:00 ish the pain was roughly under control. Ramona stayed the night in emergency with her parents and by 9 this morning was back home. The pain is largely under control now. Ramona slept a large portion of the day today although we did make it out to part of Ryan and Melissa's reception. It's likely that the combination of radiation and chemo in such a short time frame is causing this pain.
So, that's where it's at. I need to go give her a needle and eventually head to bed too.

Sleep well,
Earl

Wow! We feel incredibly prayed for!
Please keep praying as treatment plans have changed since our last post. Radiation is being stopped and Ramona is going in for chemo tomorrow night. Chemo has a greater chance of working on both her lungs and her leg.
Sleeping is still a battle due to sharp pain, but in general has improved from a few days ago.
Healing, peace, decreased pain, and a good hospital room are excellent things to pray for.

Ramona managed to fall asleep. You're welcome to put your hand on your computer screen and pray

From a medical perspective, I guess you could refer to this as a bad day. Let me first update you on a few of the things going on.
Last Thursday, we had an appointment to have Dr. Daennick look at the wound on Ramona's right shin.....
We were pretty honest with our nurse about how everything was going and almost without realizing what were doing...we're back in the hospitals
Last friday, we spent the day in HSC getting radiation started. Today was treatment number 3.

Ramona also had a CT scan of her chest today. We have the preliminary results. There is a tumor that is wrapped around her aorta. This obviously deserves immediate medical attention.

I wanted you prayer warriors to know what is going on. Thank you so much for praying for us.

Ramona spends a lot of time awake at night because of pain now...fear is also probably a bigger battle for her than ever before.

It was kinda neat where we could see God today.
We spent quite a bit of time today waiting for our doctor to get the results from the CT scan. Our nurse had given me the heads up that the news wasn't good. She brought me to a different room just before I would talk to Dr. Daennick to hear this from him. As I was sitting there, my attention was drawn to a Canadian Living magazine. On the cover was a small heading with the words 'miracle children'.
I was curious. I opened up the magazine and the main quote of that story is as follows: Where there is great love there are always miracles - Willa Cather.
That's pretty crazy. That's the quote that was on our wedding invitation. Pretty awesome thing to read just before the doctor comes in with his news. Rarely am I so encouraged from a Canadian Living magazine :)

-Earl

Deeper

This weekend Earl & I went to a Young Adult's Retreat called "Deeper" with a bunch of awesome people from Calvary Temple. We were at the Calvary Temple Camp at Red Rock Lake in the Whiteshell. This is us enjoying the sun and doing some canoeing. I hadn't been on a canoe in 3 years and loved it-even though Earl did a lot of the work. :)
The last 2 weeks have been intense. The tumor in my left leg has grown tremendously. When we left Redding, it was really small and we were super excited about how it had gotten so much smaller while we were there. Within about a week of coming home it felt about 4 times bigger. That is completely insane-it hardly seems possible. The tumor is so large now, that it is causing a lot of pain-especially nerve pain at night.

Earl & I are desperate and so hungry. We are pursuing healing at all costs. Therefore we've started to focus on inner healing. We're starting to understand the importance of that. Everyone has wounds and lies that for whatever reason, they have grown up believing. It's so amazing when you go through the lies that satan has tried to deceive you in, and find the truth, how freeing it is. All of us have opened up doors where we have allowed satan to come in and deceive. When we shut those doors and command satan and his lies to leave, not only does inner healing happen, but now physical healing also has a chance to happen. That is something that we are going through and learning. As much as it's hard-it's totally worth it.

This last weekend was totally amazing. The friends that we've made through Beyond and who were at the retreat, are so encouraging. Saturday night, one of my friends went up to a bunch of people and invited them to come and pray for me. I truly don't know how many people came up and surrounded me, probably about 15-20. They were crying out to God and asking the Holy Spirit to heal. I felt so loved-I know the only way I'm healed is through God doing a healing miracle. Here my friends were agreeing and believing with me for that miracle. The thing is, about half of the people I had never met before and some of them, I still don't know their names! After praying and praising God for a long time, the Holy Spirit revealed to one of my friends the strategy that He wanted to use for me to be healed. She was reminded of the passage in the Bible where Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane and he asks his disciples to pray for Him. When He comes back to His disciples, who are asleep, He asks them if they could not even stay awake for just one hour? Matthew 26:40 My friend felt that the Holy Spirit was saying a similar thing-Could we not pray for just one hour? Even more specifically, she felt people needed to pray in tongues for one hour every day, until total healing happened!


So immediately my friends look at their watches and start praying. I lay on the floor cause it was about midnight. A bunch of them lay on the floor, put their hands out and started praying. How beautiful-what love! An hour later we went to bed and the next morning from 8-9 the same thing happened. These friends have committed to this until healing happens. For those that are able, we are going to try and meet once a week to stay accountable. Our friend asked that we post this strategy on our blog so that everyone who wants to can join us. Gladly email us with questions.

God is so good. Yes, the pain is bad, the tumors seem to be growing and I am constantly fighting fear and yet I know God wants to heal me and I've got a group of friends who are pressing in for me. The battle is being won-satan is being defeated!!

So this is where we are at. Thank you for understanding that this blog is like our journal. We are learning and growing and are using the blog to pour out our thoughts, feelings and experiences. We are not asking that everyone agree with what we are saying-we are just pouring out our thoughts. We do not in any way, want this to be a place where theological debates are held, but rather, a place where, if people want to, they can read about the lives of two people who are fighting through and defeating cancer. We want the blog to be a place of encouragement for everyone-where only encouraging, life-giving words are spoken by us and others. We love you all!

And just an encouraging side note, the back pain that I've been battling has been about non-existent since Saturday night since people were praying-God is so good and prayer works!!

Just a quick note to let you know that we're home and have been since Monday night!

We had an incredible time in Redding and are continuing to absorb all that we learned. How awesome to know that God is ALWAYS in a good mood, that He loves us more than we can fathom and that He wants to heal me even more than I want to be healed.

Over and over in the last months I've been told to rest and not strive-that I don't have to work for my healing. That's been hard for me because I've always been performance driven. Somehow I felt that if I read my Bible more, prayed more, just in general was more Christlike, then I would be healed. That somehow God was waiting to heal me until I reached a certain level of perfectionism. I had such a wonderful reminder of that again while we were in Bethel. I remember a couple of times people telling me while they were praying for me, "You don't have to pray, you just get to absorb." And so, while others prayed, I absorbed a lot of prayer, and Jesus did a wonderful work not just in my body but also deep inside. Instead of begging God to heal me, I have the privilege of asking for more of His presence and with His presence healing will come. For me that is so freeing!

I'm so thankful for what I'm learning and experiencing. Having a relationship with Jesus and learning to listen more to the Holy Spirit is so exciting!

Earl turned a quarter century last Sunday and so we celebrated with our families yesterday. Getting old is really rough on him as he's not feeling very good today. :)

Thanks once again for all your prayers while we were on our trip. We're so super grateful for the time we could spend out there and for what we could all learn.
Have a wonderful evening
Ramona

Fun story of the day.
While we were in the Healing rooms they called out a few conditions and gave those of us who were at the conference a chance to pray.
Ramona and Dawn (a friend of ours who is herself battling cystic fibrosis) have a chance to pray for a lady with a shoulder problem. As they are praying I can see them smiling and I can see this lady testing out her arm. When I go back to chat with Ramona a little while later, the lady they were praying for is actually up front giving her testimony of healing. She had pain in her right arm that disappeared.
Blessings,
Earl

God is good.
I think it's time to just write. No words will quite sum up what we're experiencing right now anyway.

Chris Gore (one of the pastors) has an incredible testimony. To sum it up, he has lead meetings where they have seen 35,000 miracles in 9 nights. He also has a daughter at home with cerebral palsy that he's obviously contending for. Last year at this same Healing conference, he was up with her the whole night while she was screaming in pain....then the next morning, he was speaking on the goodness of God. Wow!
We saw two pretty ridiculous things happen in Ramona's body. At two different times we were praying over the tumor in Ramona's left leg and felt some shrinkage. It's pretty fun to feel it soften up. Peter, a doctor from the UK was also there praying with us. It's awesome to have his affirmation of what is going on.
Also, we watched Ramona's legs change length. You may wonder what that has to do with healing cancer.....and so do we. Keith (third year student) came to us yesterday and asked if Ramona's legs were different lengths. Sure enough, they were. So, we prayed over them and then one grew. That was pretty fun. They changed, but they still weren't equal. Her body felt like it was lop sided the other way. Later on in the evening, we prayed again and her legs changed again!!!!!!
These are the testimonies we remind ourselves of as we fall asleep while battling for the pain in her back.
A ridiculous number of stories still untold.
Heading to the healing rooms now,
Earl

Yesterday we took a ride to the coast. My wet hand is as close as Ramona got to the ocean :) It was kinda cold and a bit of an awkward descent to the water

Okay, I know this picture didn't turn out to well. We drove hundreds of miles to see big trees...and we finally found them. It was a fun little date on our one day out here that doesn't have any thing planned.

The Bethel church is in the background. You can see the edge of the 24hr prayer house on the left

Ramona is cooling her feet in the Pool of Bethesda. (seen in picture above)

You know, it's alot easier for me to describe these pictures than to explain what's actually going on out here. I just mentioned to Ramona that if we won Lotto 649...it would only be another good part of the day.
On Sunday we were incredibly blessed. Bill Johnson spoke sunday morning and Kris Vallatton spoke Sunday night (both messages available at www.ibethel.tv) It was almost surreal. While Bill was speaking I kept catching myself looking at the screens instead of him...I was hardly used to him being real.
Ramona was prayed over after both services on Sunday. Both times were incredibly powerful and encouraging. The words spoken over her spoke so much.......life.
Today we both had sozo sessions. This isn't couselling, it's kinda like having a wise/spirit filled person guide you through the process of the Holy Spirit speaking to you and revealing things.....etc....
Again, powerful and freeing and....you're kinda left with this fun feeling afterward
We had coffee with Matthew this evening. He is the guy who prayer over Ramona Sunday morning after church. It again was just an incredible blessing. It really feels like tonight was simply a giant leap in our relationships with Jesus. There were so many words spoken over us tonight again. So many things spoken over us in the last few days....just line up....and speak to who God is and the incredible plans He has for us.
I've journalled about as much in the last five days as in the previous month and a half.
Tomorrow the Healing Conference begins. The feeling I get is that we haven't seen anything yet.
We've definitely seen some breakthrough in Ramona's body. Although the completion of her healing hasn't happened yet (last I checked...maybe I should quickly stick my hand under the blanket and find out), we can't help but have our faith sky rocket in this sort of an atmosphere. (The quote from Bill Johnson "A day without a miracle is just a boring day" is true)...
We're really blessed with peace
We realized again today how incredibly supported we've been these last three years...I again want to thank everyone for investing in our lives....
It's due to your financial gifts and prayers that we could ever come here.
to be continued......for a long time
-Earl

It's truly a pleasure being at Jacob and Lilly's house. (this is the picture that doesn't include Hannah Montana)
We were at the Healing Rooms this morning. It's unbelievable. I'm not sure how to describe it. Either you have experienced the presence of God or you haven't. Descriptive words by themselves don't feel like they will accomplish much. There is a much bigger expectation and peace for us being here a second time now. It's a lot of fun to be in such an atmosphere of.....joy. Although we didn't watch Ramona's hip grow out and cancer disappear right there. The understanding that God is good and loves to heal is....confirmed and solidified over and over. It's fun to hear testimonies of healing and watch people waving canes in the air instead of leaning on them

We went to Lake Shasta this afternoon as a family of 10 and took the ride to the Lake Shasta Caverns

Thanks so much for praying for us......

For now,
Earl

We kinda forgot to take pictures last time we were out in Redding...so we're being more intentional this time. This first picture is Ramona eating ice cream in Denver.

And... we're safely at Jacob and Lilly's house. It's time to sleep. We're going to Bethel's healing rooms in the morning.

Off To California!

A little update...
Earl & I had an awesome time at Beyond last Sunday-God's presence was super powerful!! Thanks to all of our awesome friends there who pray and pray and pray. We love you and appreciate you so much!! It's such an awesome thing to be surrounded by others who believe!
And so now our bags are about packed and tomorrow we're off to Redding, California. Earl & I are really excited to see what God's going to do there. We both expect big things. We're longing for huge spiritual growth as well as the cancer being eradicated!! Pray that the tumor pain that I'm experiencing now will not distract me too much. It's so hard not to fear when you have pain due to lung tumors and you know that if they get too large-you'll die. HOWEVER, I believe I will live and that God's got huge plans for our lives. Satan knows it and is just trying to give me fear.

And so that's that. We'll see how well we are with keeping you posted. :)

Ramona

I'm in one of these moods where if I don't watch myself....I'll just write endlessly...we just got back from an awesome time at Beyond......

...in my attempt to keep this business-like, I'll get to one of my points.
I was just going to mention that Ramona is not doing chemo this week. We're flying out to Redding on the 22nd and don't want Ramona's counts to be low while we're out there....

...Ramona is also mentioning that a good thing to pray for is her breathing/chest.....something just isn't quite right....

Be blessed and have a good night....

-Earl

We went to Kendra's funeral on Friday. It's always tough for me when someone passes away, but it's especially hard when it's someone who's battling the same thing I am.

Kendra was diagnosed with E-wing's Sarcoma about a year ago. We spent numerous hours together in the hospital receiving some of the same kinds of chemo. Kendra had a bubbly, happy spirit. She loved to talk!
Kendra and I were both going to beat this and one day we'd have a big reunion with all our other sarcoma buddies and introduce our families and very importantly, our babies.

The last time I saw Kendra was the day she was told that she was palliative. I told her not to believe it, just because the doctors think you're palliative, doesn't mean you're going to die. We both serve a God who's way bigger and does incredible miracles. Even though Kendra had just heard such horrible news minutes earlier, when she visited me she was her usual happy self. She kept saying, "God's got a plan. Either He's going to heal me on earth or He's going to heal me in heaven."

Well, she's in heaven now and a part of me is so jealous. Not one drop of chemo is ever going to touch her again. Right now she has no pain and is running around, having an amazing time.
Kendra, I guess our big reunion is going to happen in heaven someday where we can show off our new bodies and praise Jesus together.
It's going to be lonely in the hospital without you-I miss you
Much love,
Ramona