Colson Update 1/9/06

Dear friends, family, and prayer warriors,

First and foremost, we cannot thank you enough for your prayer support. I am reminded of a story from 2 Samuel when the enemies of King David had him on the run, and he had not seen his beloved Jerusalem for months. At one point, his longings led him to say that he wished for nothing more than to drink from one of his favorite springs in the city. Upon hearing this, some of David's men decided to risk their own lives and fight their way behind enemy lines to bring back some water from this pool to their king. When, the men then presented their gift to David, he was quite humbled and told the men that this water was much too valuable for him to drink for his own pleasure, since his friends had laid their lives on the line for it, and David poured it out before the Lord as an offering of great value.

The one greatest blessing and lesson that I have received throughout this entire experience has come from knowing that so many people have been praying for Cynthia and I and our families and being able to see so many results of this prayer. I am constantly humbled by this sacrifice and see it as a gift of the highest value. I thank you for your sacrifice, and we give God the glory for it.

December was an incredible month for us, as we saw so many results of this prayer. On December 21st, I completed my 7th of 14 chemo treatments, marking the halfway point, and I was blessed to have no complications, once again. My doctors are happy to see that the elevated liver numbers that I was experiencing with treatment are only occurring at the smallest degree. The following day, December 22nd, was my LAST day of radiation therapy. I did experience some unpleasant side effects from the radiation therapy, but most of them only lasted about 10 days, and I am about 95% recovered from these. While those 10 days were about the hardest that I had experienced both physically and emotionally, I know that prayer got us through them. All of this made Christmas very different this year (I took 2 naps on Christmas day ) but it was still very merry, and New Year's was still happy (I had my hoppin' John and collard greens, so I'm ready for 2006).

My next chemo treatment is on this Wednesday, January 11th, and they will be adding back one of the drugs that they removed during my radiation, so it may be a little harder, physically than the last couple of times, especially as I feel that I have not completely recovered my energy level from the effects of the radiation. We appreciate your prayers for this.

Once again, thank you so much- prayer has definitely made all of the difference in this journey. Please pray for Cynthia's dad as well. He has been having some very painful problems with his feet and legs lately.

Trusting Him,

Joey and Cynthia Colson