Thanksgiving Morning

A quiet Thanksgiving morning, got some snow yesterday and it is still snowing gently. It is very peaceful outside. This is the view from our diningroom.

Starting to smell the turkey.

Doing some reading about the inter testament period  - roughly 400 years between the Old and New Testament. Fascinating time. The conquests of Alexander the Great set the stage for the conflicts between the Hellenistic Jews (the Seleucid Empire), the Pharisees and Christ.

A good day.

Sgt. John King - Update

Sgt John King is on the right.

John is off the ventilator and breathing on his own. He responds physically to oral communications but he has trouble focusing his eyes and from what we understand, he still cannot speak. He is still not out of the woods yet but his progress is very encouraging.

Please continue to pray for John, for his complete recovery.

His family is not well to do at all. John's parents and his sister are incurring substantial expenses by staying in North Carolina and his dad requires periodic medical attention for his own long term illness.

There is a web site that is collecting funds for the family here.

If you have a blog of your own, please feel free to include a link to the above site.

Thank you all so very much.

Breanna, Her Name Is Breanna

The FB page reporting John King's accident and the road to recovery posted this account of the accident and the woman who saved his life.

The following is the basic story of the day of the accident that she shared with the family yesterday evening: Breanna and her husband have a roadside fruit stand which they only recently moved to that particular street. She was at the stand on Saturday and actually realized that the accident was about to happen just before it did. (Someone ran a red light.)

That car hit another. Jon tried to brake, but he skidded all the way and hit one of the cars head first. When she reached Jonathan, Breanna could find no pulse, and he blood was coming from his mouth.

Breanna has never had CPR training, but she had someone dial 911 so that they could talk her through it. At one point people involved in the accident were arguing loudly, and this young lady became a Mighty Warrior and hushed the crowd. She said it took about 5 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, so she continued CPR even though she couldn't get any response.

She said said she somehow knew that Jon is military, and her father was also military.

One more interesting note is that Breanna's husband is named Jonathan!

John's condition continues to improve. We are very thankful to God for this answer to prayer.

I know I've posted quite a bit about John, but I really like this fine young man. John and our daughter were seeing each other when she was posted at Ft. Bragg. We were in Fayetteville twice last year and got to know him well. He also drove her home once and visited us for a few days. The wife and I were hoping that ... well, you know.

Sgt. John King

John continues to show improvement over the past two days.
He is by no means out of danger and is still in intensive care, but his vitals have improved and doctors are more optimistic.

update 9/11: Praise the Lord-Jon has remained stable throughout the afternoon. If he continues to do so during the night, the doctors will be making a decision about giving him the reflex exercises to test his neurological response. This involves removing him from all medication, and it is definitely a big decision to be made.

Hopefully we will also soon learn the identity of the woman who witnessed the accident and stopped to give John CPR before the ambulance arrived. There are no other details but apparently she saved his life.

Bless all of you for your prayers. John was at death's door ringing the doorbell.