More on “How Am I Doing”

I am thankful that I have many friends that ask me how I am doing and actually care about the answer. <smile> There is not a lot of change to report, but I am slowly but steadily improving. I have been able to go to church the last two Sundays in a row without a great deal of discomfort. This is the first time that has happened since this all started in December of 2016. We were even able to go out yesterday after church with some friends and have a long conversation at a restaurant. That was fun. I have been doing some walking and a little strength training with resistance bands. The edema does not seem to be improving very much, even with an increased dosage of my prescription medicine. I am looking forward to meeting with an edema specialist on March 2nd when we go back into Stanford for the PET scan and follow up.

I am now officially on social security disability for the rest of 2018. I will be re-evaluated next January by SSDI to see if that will continue long term. We also have received our Medi-Cal cards and are set up with new medical insurance. We don’t know what the next step will be for us and are using the January-March period to seek God’s direction for the next step. This means we will not be receiving our Liebenzell salary for the next 3 months while we wait to hear what God has for us. No worries, we are OK financially for that time with our SS payments. Any donations received at LMUSA will continue to go into our account there. In March we will make a decision about whether we will continue to serve as employee missionaries with LMUSA in a stateside position and restart salary on April 1, or be retired active missionaries (this would allow us to maintain a ministry account with LMUSA), or be inactive retired missionaries which would mean we would discontinue our support there. We would appreciate your prayers on this as we have a lot of issues to look at as we make this decision, including my health and other practical issues. BUT, the most important issue is calling. We want to make sure that this next step of our life and ministry is something God is calling us to do. This is the compelling and only reason to do ministry and we want  to make sure this is the reason we serve. We value your prayers as we move through this time of uncertainty into the next adventure God has for us.