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It’s been pretty crazy for the past week or so on The Wave. Last Monday we really weren’t sure where we were supposed to go or what we were supposed to do, so we all just lifted it to the Lord to see if it were His planning that brought us to that point. Holland, Michigan went really well. One of the times that I really felt used was not at a “ministry” time but instead it was just hanging out and having a good time. This might sound petty but here’s what happened: Derek and I were at a coffee shop getting some website updates done and he got a phone call from this lady that we had met in the park a couple days previous. She had heard about who his family used to live with (some Christian psychologist/author in Switzerland) and was really interested in hearing about those times, so we were invited to come over to their place where they were sitting by the camp fire - three couples, Derek, Joey and myself. What we were able to do was to:

1. Encourage and teach one of the guys who’s really had some difficulty understanding living out faith and raw obedience to God.
2. In a prayer time, Derek was able to figure out one of the other guys personal issues and pray into that.
3. Another one of the guys was an orthopedic surgeon who has been looking for a way to be used. He had done something in South America before, which didn’t go the best because he wasn’t able to acquire the tools that he needed to get his job done. We told him about Mercy Ships International, he’s going to be looking into that. This guy is so passionate about this, I’m excited to see what he’ll do one day.

Anyway, back to the situation we had at hand… What were we going to do? Derek had gotten a word that someone should go to Detroit, he and I were at first talking about us going, maybe with one or two other people. It ended up that it was myself, Paul and Christopher. A few of the other people felt strongly towards going to a campground on the lake just south of Holland, five went there. The rest of the people ended up going to some huge Christian music festival somewhere in Ohio to volunteer. They ended up running concession stands while still being able to listen to such bands as Audio Adrenaline, Reliant K and several others who people who listen to Christian music think are important. The desicions on where to go didn’t really come this easy, but that’s the end result :).

Paul, Christopher and I were still not sure why we were in Detroit even up to the point of us being right smack in the middle of downtown looking up at GM’s headquarters. It didn’t become clear to us until we were walking along the park that overlooks the river, on the other side of this river was Windsor, Ontario. That’s right - Canada. In seeing all of the trucks coming over the bridge from Canada it suddenly became clear that this area is a large player in the relations and commerce between our two nations. So here we were - at a gateway city. The three of us - two Americans and a Canadian - then knew why we were there. This was a gateway city that we felt we were supposed use to pray over the US, for Canada, and for the relationship between the two nations. You see one of the missions of the wave is to pray at every state capital and at the extremes of the country (south-eastern most point, north-eastern most point, etc). This is what we did, and afterwards we really felt like we had done what we were supposed to do there.

A couple of days later the three of us were in Chicago at a friends house (Nelson). We came here a couple of days early to scope Chicago out to find out some good things to do here. The first morning is when I first heard about problems with a fellow waver, Renee Dueck (21 years old). A week previous she noticed some strange splotches on her feet, so she went to a doctor to get it checked out. After running blood work they noticed that her white blood cell count was low. Because of her medical history (bone marrow transfusion as 7 month old baby) they then decided to do a bone marrow biopsy to check for any signs of leukemia. A day after the test was performed she was called to come into the hospital for further tests to be run - the bone marrow biopsy indicated presence of leukemia. Two days later she was officially diagnosed with AML leukemia (you can read about that by clicking here). So now they are going to immediately start chemotherapy and possibly do another bone marrow transplant (they are thinking that this might be a delayed rejection of the previous one). I think that her and her family are currently en route to NYC to get this all started (apparently it’s one of the top cancer centers at a hospital there).

Please keep Renee in your thoughts and prayers. She’s a very beautiful person with more talent and passion than most people I’ve met in life. We’ll be keeping the prayer page updated on the wave website - you can view that by clicking here.