A New Visitor and Special Visitors
On the first Sunday morning in the month of August, we had a new visitor, Mr. Reuben Torres, visit with us. Reuben is a Mexican American and somewhat bilingual, a young Christian, the father of three children, separated from his wife but hoping to re-establish his marriage. He brought his Bible and a notebook for taking notes and has come back every service since then. He seems to be desirous to learn God’s Word along with us, and is a welcome visitor. Please remember Reuben and his wife, Jamie, and their young children in prayer. Their situation is difficult but not impossible with the Lord.
Other special visitors we had this month were my sister Phyllis and her husband, Jackson Diehl, from Honey Brook, Pennsylvania. My sister Phyllis is an excellent pianist, and I asked her to play for our service. She and I sang a duet, the first time I have sung since my heart attack, and I led the music for the congregational singing. We had an excellent service, and Phyllis and Jack were a blessing to us.
Health Update
I had my six month checkup with my cardiologist and they discovered that my heart was involved in producing 5,500 premature ventricular contractions daily above the normal heartbeats. Although I cannot feel them, they referred me to a specialist, an electro-physiologist who was to advise me on the possibility of having a heart ablation procedure done to reduce the number of premature ventricular contractions. In the procedure, the specialist inserts a wire with a device that transmits high frequency radio waves into the heart to burn and destroy the heart tissue in the area where the contractions are occurring so that they will stop occurring. After talking to me, the specialist advised me against having the ablation procedure done because my heart wall is so thin that his device might burn a hole in the heart wall resulting in my death. He sent me home wearing a heart monitor to record precisely the number of premature ventricular contractions I was having in a 24 hour period. Now here is the curious thing. The 24 hour heart monitor showed that the number of premature ventricular contractions that I had during the monitoring period was relatively small and that the ablation procedure would not be needed! Two things are involved in my thinking about this: first, that many were praying for me for the Lord to give me wisdom about having the ablation procedure. Second, that I stopped taking a medicine called Coreg that had been troubling me for several months with low energy and weakness. I had stopped taking the Coreg after my cardiologist told me that I was having 5,550 premature ventricular contractions and before I went to the specialist. I think that the Coreg was causing the increase of the contractions because after stopping the Coreg, they subsided markedly. Thanks for your prayers! Praise the Lord!
By His grace and in loving gratitude,
Timothy Parrow