......still April 26th

Kay’s sister and brother-in-law planned to take her, Kym and Jesse to Brandon. We planned to wait until the next day to go down there. The helicopter arrived at the hospital in Brandon and Joe’s condition was evaluated and it was decided that he should be flown by airplane to the main Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, GA. The center in Brandon can handle burn cases up to, but no larger than, 20% of the body. They said that Joe had more burns than that and the grafts would have to be done in Augusta.  Even before Kay arrived in Brandon, we got the word by phone that Joe was going to be flown to Augusta. She was allowed to go with Joe on the small jet plane. Kym and Jesse came back with Kay’s sister and brother-in-law. Kym is 21 and responsible enough to take care of things at home, with the help of Jesse, who is 18. Kym packed some clothes and necessities for her mother, brought them to our house and put them in our van in the wee hours of the night.

Speaking of the wee hours of the night, it was around 1:00 AM that our phone rang.... it is never good news that comes in the wee hours of the night! I heard Kay saying that the people in Brandon said that Joe was burned over 80% of his body and lots of those were third degree burns. This was much worse news than we had first received! Needless to say, we didn’t sleep much that night. More tears, more prayer, much more prayer!

After a long time, I was finally able to say, "Dear God, You know I want You to save and heal my son, that is my fervent prayer, BUT if You are ready to take him, Thy will be done." Somehow I didn’t feel like this was giving up on my desire for Joe to be healed, but that I was putting myself and my desires into alignment with God’s will. I hope I’m right on this. It was only after this prayer of completely surrendering my will to God, that I felt a measure of relief and was able to sleep some.
　
Our clothes and the things we would need had to be packed. How long would we be away? We never thought about that, just that we had to be there for Joe and Kay.  Sometime between our leaving the hospital and our going to bed, I found time to pack our clothes and to jot a quick note to my E-mail friends telling them about Joe’s accident and asking them to pray. I also posted about the same thing on my blog, Counting My Blessings. In time to come we found that many people who heard of my prayer request not only prayed, but told others about it and they prayed, also. Later we heard that this request was on the nearby popular Christian Radio Station, WFCA, the prayer list of many churches, not only in our state of MS, but in many other states and even in some foreign countries. Over the next two months, we experienced the most wonderful outpouring of love and support, as we heard about so many people praying for Joe!