I wanted send out a quick update on how everything is going for the Wilbanks family...
Up until two weeks ago everything had been going pretty smoothly for the whole family, I had finally gotten the house put back together from all the flooding that occurred last March, the kids and Alicia had each started back to school and we all had begun to get back into a normal schedule, if there is such a thing. Alicia and I had begun our fundraising for our January trip to Uganda, and with a little less than 5 months to go before we left, our excitement had started to build. But as excited as we were/are for our upcoming trip to the ranch we were even more excited for a special anniversary that was coming up on Friday, September 23rd.
The 23rd of September would have been a year since Wyatt had experienced a seizure. (For those of you who didn't know, Wyatt was diagnosed with Epilepsy just before his 6th birthday and has been on medication for over two years to control them.) We already had his yearly check up with his neurologist scheduled for the following Wednesday where he had planned to started weaning Wyatt off his seizures medications. For us this would have been a HUGE answered prayer!! Wyatt and his medical condition have been our biggest concern since starting this Ugandan journey. With his year anniversary of being seizure free coming up Alicia and I had let ourselves start to believe that this period in his life was coming to an end and maybe even that God was going to grant us this request for being so willing to follow him into the mission field. The phone call that Alicia received on Tuesday, September 20th at 11:15, just three days before Wyatt's big anniversary, would put all those hopes/illusions to a screaming halt.
The call was from the school nurse to inform us that Wyatt was in the middle of a seizure in his classroom and in fact had been having one for about 15 minutes and was not coming out of it. There's a joke about how slow city vehicles seem to just drive around our city, and that the drivers of those vehicles are never in a hurry to go anywhere and how bad it is to get stuck behind one. But when I got the call that no father every wants to get from a wife with the kind of panic that can only mean one thing in her voice, I got in my city truck and turned a 20 min drive into a 5 min drive. I got to the school first and found Wyatt on the floor of his class room, with the school nurse and his teacher on their knees around him, still in a seizure. The shaking, drooling, eyes rolling back in his head had all stopped by the time I walked in the room. The look on the nurse's and teacher's faces was enough to let me know it had been a bad one. They were truly rattled. I picked Wyatt's limp body up off the floor and as I did he looked up at me to acknowledge my presence in the room but his brain wouldn't allow him to put any words together. I sat down in a chair and began to rock him until Alicia got there. I kept praying that he would be the same kid after the event that he was before it. The types of seizures Wyatt has are the types that you can have and that you may never come out of or when you do, you might not be the same when its over. So with every seizure Alicia and I hold our breath and pray that God will bring our little buddy back to us. Over the next week Wyatt would have three other much smaller seizures even after his Dr. had upped his meds. We now have scheduled him for a 24 hour EEG to hopefully find out why after 11 months of no seizures he has had so many, when he didn't even have this many so close together before going on medication.
As of right now his medications seem to have done the trick and I'm happy to say Wyatt has been 1 weeks seizure free (and like parents of newborns, we start counting the days and weeks again). Now 1 week past all the events I find myself thanking God for allowing all this to happen when it did and not when Alicia and I were 3 thousand miles away. I can't imagine how hard that call would have been to get if we would have received it in Uganda and not 20 min. away. It has also made both of so thankful for the gift of having children and for the time God gives us with each of them. It reminds us of how precious that time is. God never promises us a tomorrow only that he will always be with us.
We want to thank you all for your love and support.
Prayer Request:
1. That God would be magnified through the life we live
2. That ACM feeding program would be brought back to the levels before the cuts. And that it would even be expanded.
3. That God would bring the right people along beside ACM to aid in the work they are doing in Uganda.
4. That our family will remain commeted to finding Gods will for our lives.
5. For the saftey and health of our family while were away.
6. That God will make his will known to Alicia and I while on this trip.
7. That the funds we still have left to raise for our trip will come in and come in quickly so we can purchase our airfaire at a cheaper rate.
God bless you all
The Wilbanks family
