Wednesday Night -- Josiah & a Guy Named Pat

Sorry I didn't get around to posting anything yesterday. Or did I post something yesterday?! Shoot! I can't remember!!! Aaaaah ...

Whatever. No biggity. So, the big milestone of the day was seeing Josiah open one of his eyes and look at us for a good long time!!! It was so amazing! Marie's folks were in again this evening and they were able to hold Josiah for the first time, another notable marker in his young life. Chris & I also read Josiah his first and second story ever. I felt that Robert Munsch was a good choice; although his characters are often dysfunctional, it's a pleasant dysfunction that often comes to a happy resolution!

I can't remember if I told you about Josiah's eyes being scanned, but the technicians did look at his eyes yesterday. They were concerned that his eyes might be small, but they are totally normal and healthy! Josiah just has a habit of scrunching up his eyelids really tight, so tight that you rarely even see his eyelashes!

Tomorrow we are meeting with the geneticists (time unknown) and we would really like your prayers leading up to this. In good news and bad, we know that God is control and that he made Josiah the way he did for a reason. And we also know that if the doctors bring us discouraging results, we know that our God is not bound or far away but can work the most wonderful miracles in even the most tragic and unreversable circumstances. We've been so encouraged with Josiah's progress and his strength, and we trust that God will continue to 'support' and 'heal' him as he was so aptly (divinely?!) named.

OK. Time for a funny story. So, my dear cousins Rick & Rachel are due to have a child in March, about a week or so before Marie was due. They already knew they were going to have a son, which was going to be the first great-grandson in the Haak family (that's a big deal!). Yeah, we kind of beat them, eh? So sorry guys, but we couldn't do anything about it!!! And to make matters even more humourous/ironic, "Josiah" was one of the two names chosen for their boy!!! Seriously! It's more amazing than sad because "Josiah" is not that popular of a name! Well, we haven't talked to them directly but I think they are OK with having to go to their other name choice, but I think it will be a long-lasting family joke. FYI, "Josiah" in their name book means "Yahweh heals". Wow eh? God is good AND pretty cool. You can pray for these guys as they are getting ready to have their son. Every mom and dad and need and deserve prayer!

Another story: last night Marie and I were walking home from the hospital to the Easter Seals place where we are stay - WHOA. I just connected something. Is the Easter Seals place the same thing that you support with those seals that you get in the mail?!?!? OK. Sorry random tangent ...

Anyways, we're walking to our place and stopped in at a gas station for some snacks (Jalapeno chips and chocolate milk!). I asked Marie if we could walk around Safeway to 'feel normal again'. Sometimes you just need to get in touch with something that is a symbol of routine outside of the hospital life.

So we're leaning against the Safeway wall finishing our snacks when a homeless guy bikes up with all his bottles. We get to have this really amazing conversation with this guy whose name is Pat. He's got just an incredible story of his life: used to live in Nova Scotia, once was a steel engineer and built big things in Ontario (such as the Skydome), competed in mountain bike, broke a vertabre in a freaky bike accident, and has been on the streets ever since. He's not really homeless (he's got a one room place with its own bath ... of which he is SO EXCITED!) but he's not paying a whole lot for it so you can imagine it's a dive.

He collects bottles all day to survive (because his pension isn't enough) and in a day can easily make $80 from working the same 4x4 grid of streets each day. Pretty incredible. He takes a dirty, no-respect kind of job and turns it into a honest and do-able way to live.

It was pretty neat to hear how he really credits God (and the BC government!) for his new lease on life because he is able to live and move with his new back parts (he also was quite honest with the fact that drugs he has been prescribed he didn't like and so uses MJ to get rid of the pain!!!)

So after about a 10 minute chat we were cold enough to go inside and pace around Safeway (and he needed to get his bottles in before they closed), but I was able to see him tonight and it was so encouraging that he was totally excited to see me again and - get this - he said he prayed for our Josiah! (which, in his words, was a pretty big deal because he hadn't prayed for such a long time!)

This was definitely my most positive experience with a 'homeless' person. Of course, with every encouraging experience you may get two or three negative or scary experiences, but the good ones are so incredible that they keep you going even through the discouraging ones.

Tangent Alert: The main speaker this year RUSH seems like a pretty good guy. I read an article about him in the latest Relevant magazine and - if I remember right - he makes it his life living with people on the street and ministering to them. He actually worked along side Mother Theresa for a bit!

I like Pat. I think he would make a good friend and I hope one day he can find a great church and a group of friends to support him.

Please pray for Pat (and people you may know like him), for Rick & Rachel and for our boy Josiah, and for my Marie. Tomorrow if there is any difficult news to to take, I think it will hit her a lot harder (and longer) than me.

Loving & Living In God's Presence.
- Andrew, Marie & Josiah