Okay! Okay!....

Alright! So we'll try to do better updating our blog.

Seriously, please forgive us. Life can so quickly get away from us here that we forget to take care of this little internet wonder. Cristy is much more organized that I am about life, but with taking care of Isaiah and lots of other things she rarely has time to sit down and blog. And me being a card-carrying member of the A.D.D. society so often forget. So from now on I'll try to blog at least once a week.

The month of June was particularly busy. I was involved with a number of youth events at the church, and a mission trip down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to help with work going on there. But in the midst of all of that we found out that Isaiah was going to need his shunt revised. To top it all off Cristy, on a Saturday evening was suddenly struck with a kidney stone. She was in immense pain, so we rushed her to the hospital making it home at about 3am Sunday morning.

To make a long story short, she was able to get some relief from the stone with medicines, but I left for the mission trip Monday afternoon, and she still hadn't passed it. I returned back to Yazoo City on Wednesday night in time for Isaiah's shunt surgery on Thursday morning. All went very well and we only had to spend one night in the hospital.

We had been planning to leave for North Carolina on Saturday June 24th before all of this happened. The doctor said that Isaiah was fine to travel, but we were uncertain what to do because of Cristy's situation. We prayed and subsequently decided to go ahead and go since it would probably be Christmas before we could make a trip out there again. Well, thank the Lord, Cristy gave birth to a 4mm kidney stone in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Our trip was so very enjoyable and relaxing. We really just enjoyed visiting. I got to both teach Sunday School and preach at Cristy's old home church of Beacon Baptist. Cristy also got to teach a ladies Sunday School class and talk to the youth on Wednesday night. We also took a day and went to visit Old Salem, and we even got to go to a baseball game while we were there.

We returned home where I had about a month to finish off my youth duties at the church. For those of you who don't know, I'm no longer the youth director at First Presbyterian Church. I'll still be doing choir there, but for the remainder of our time in Yazoo City, I'm going to be doing that and I'll be a part-time teachers assistant for a 6th - grade class at a local Christian School. I'm very excited about this opportunity. I'll talk more about this in a moment.

On the home front here, Isaiah continues to grow and develop quite well. On all of his cognative evaluations he is developing normally which means there is no indication thus far of slowed mental development. We pray that this will continue.

As expected, though, there is some slowness in his physical development. He does have a considerable amount of movement in his legs, but it is only, thus far, to a limited capacity. He extends his legs quite well, but rarely is able to pull them up closer to his body. This, of course, is all part of spina bifida, so it is not unexpected. On a good note, being able to extend his legs is a good indication that he'll be able to stand on his own one day. Quite honestly though, we take this one day at a time. The more we learn and study, the more we learn that spina bifida is a strange thing. What appears to work today is no guarantee of tomorrow, which in some ways is good and in some ways is bad. Therefore, we do not trust in statistics. We are so very very thankful for what we have right now and what the Lord enables Isaiah to do.

After about two weeks at home we made a short trip to Baton Rouge to visit my family there. We were able to spend a Friday and a Saturday visiting with my whole family. While we were there also we were able to get a new laptop computer! Already this has been a blessing to our ministry.

Which brings us now the question, "How are things going with your Russia plans?" The answer to that is "great!" We are not about 1/3 of the way there on our support (118 days), and we continue to get support pledges from various people. We are also planning to visit some more churches here in the near future to share our vision for our work there.

Right now our plans are the same as they were before; we plan to leave for Russia August 1, 2007, and move to St. Petersburg for about 2 years so that we can study language and be close to the Polyenov Clinic there to care for Isaiah's needs.

Also, for those of you who might be interested, we now have a couple of "fun" things you can get that are associated with our ministry. These things make great conversation pieces at family reunions. Also, get one of our T-shirts and strike up a conversation on a plane with a stranger about the poor souls you exiled to Siberia! Seriously, check it out at http://www.cafepress.com/siberiangrits





Finally, what about all of this teaching stuff? Well, first, let me say that nothing is wrong. My being able stop doing the youth work at First Pres is actually a gift to both Cristy and I that essentially frees us up more to prepare for the mission field. My work teaching will only be part-time during the week and will allow us to visit more churches and make more contacts, as well us allow us more time together as a family to prepare. I'll be teaching History, Science and Bible to a 6th-grade class all school year.

In addition, there are a number of other ministry opportunities I'm hoping to be involved in this next year. There is a group of young guys at the local private academy that are hoping to get together and form an accountability group for the upcoming school year. I'm kind of spear-heading this endeavour, but already there's been a good response of about 8 guys who want to participate and who are serious about walking with the Lord. Please be in prayer for this.

Well, it's getting late and I'm getting tired. I hope this suffices until next week.

In Christ,
Thomas for the Slawson clan (Cristy and Isaiah)