It is always nice getting home after being away, isn’t it. After being gone for nearly a month, spending half that time in California and half in Georgia, we arrived home Monday, a beautiful sunny day; it is good to be back home.

Third day back I was finally seeing the top of my dining table where piles of opened mail had taken up residence. It took me an hour to open all that mail on Tuesday! The neat thing is the calm and peace I have while I methodically empty suitcases and go through piles of laundry as well as piles of mail, the rest of the house waiting until I can get to those other chores. And that is just at home! I’ve had to catch up at the Mustard Seeds office as well. Thankfully all is well around here, no unpleasant surprises (our house is still standing, no broken water pipes, etc.).

Well, no surprises arising from home base, but there were a couple from the medical insurance. Some unexpected claim denials which potentially could cost us a lot of money, were in the mail awaiting us. I’ve spent lots of time on the phone this week looking into these issues. I would ask you to pray they will be settled in such a way that either the insurance will cover the costs or the provider (doctor or hospital) will write off the uncovered portion. We already are paying multiple medical bills (they never seem to end…and we aren’t growing younger!).

While in Roswell, GA, I was able to spend many days with my mom, who lives with one of my brothers and sister in law, while Randy drove to the Charleston, SC, area for a week-end missions conference in a supporting church there, and since we stayed the following week in the Atlanta area to attend the mission emphasis Sunday (March 7) at our home church in Roswell, I had those days as well to visit her. Important time. Mom has always been one to serve her family, always “there” for us. Now it is our opportunity to serve her. My brother and his wife have taken on the bulk of that ministry and I know God is blessing them for it. I will try to be there as much as I can, as well. Please pray for mom and the rest of us, too, as we learn the ministry of “being” to our mother.

When I was in GA I began to have facial weakness. I haven’t had any such weakness for over a year. I was wondering if it was a combination of the stress of the sickness which put me in the ICU in Charlotte, NC, in early February, and the travel and being on the go for the past 31/2 weeks following close on the heels of being so sick. Plus I have continued cutting back on the immune system suppressing drug for MG. Will you pray for me to increase in strength and not continue to experience weakness? I am going to the Lord, too.

Hmmm. The end of March my son Seth will celebrate his birthday. I was telling my other daughter-in-law that even though your children grow up and become adults, and you interact with them as adults, as a parent you have all that history of infancy, childhood and adolescence in the back of your consciousness; the pictures in the mind of the cute baby and child he was. An adult child will always be your “child”, to a parent. So when we look at our grown children, even though we relate to them as adults, with all that history, the love we have for them is different when compared to that for other adults we interact with. (Am I making sense here? This is fancier verbal footwork than line dancing, and “you know I can’t dance”!).

Now my son, who has a son himself, is anticipating the entrance into our world of his second child about a month following his own birthday celebration. And I am so happy for that little one (boy or girl, we will announce when we know!) knowing that he or she is part of a loving family, one happily anticipating his or her arrival.

It has been a joy to see our 2 sons and their wives (the daughters I never had before) establish loving, healthy, godly families. “I have no greater joy than this, to see my children walking in the truth.” III John 4. When you pray for Randy and me, won’t you also lift up our children and their children, too? They are fruit of our lives and we thank God for them.

Jacque