We are nearing the end of our summer with Ami at home, and it has not been an easy one as you all know.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Behind the scenes when David was going through his operations and emergency, Ami was very ill as well. In Israel this summer many people fell prey to some extremely virulent stomach flu/viruses that even put them in the hospital, and the night before David's second emergency operation, Ami began vomiting and having diarrhea non stop for 9 hours. I had fallen asleep and was awakened at about 11:30 PM by my cell phone ringing. It was Ami calling me from his bedroom, too weak to even get out of bed, to let me know he had called the ambulance for himself! I threw on some clothes, ran downstairs and opened the locked gate and door to our house to let the paramedics in who had already arrived. We traveled to the emergency room of a large hospital about ½ an hour from Ariel, and sure enough he was suffering from dehydration!
Between blood tests and receiving two large bags of IV fluid, we finally got back home at 6 AM. We both went right to bed, but two hours later at 8 AM I began getting phone calls that David had been taken back into the operating room. One of my sons, also named Ariel, drove me to the hospital where David was, an hour drive from my house. My daughter and son-in-law also met me there. My daughter was able to stay with me the whole day until the evening as we struggled to find out what had really happened to David. Her husband took the day off of work (he is the owner of a meat business) to wait until the operation ended, and then went home to pick up their children from kindergarten and nursery school and take care of them. On top of the trauma of the day, in the back of my mind I was also worried about Ami, but could only place him on God's hands.
Ami doesn't even remember that next day and for the next three days he slept and woke up only to to use the bathroom and drink water. It took him a week to begin to feel better, but in the meantime he struggled to help me as much as he could as I was struggling to help David. I would be at the hospital for 12 or 13 hours with David, and then rush home to try to ensure that Ami wasn't getting dehydrated again, and to try to get some nutrition into him. He lost a lot of weight, and then actually had two relapses of the virus throughout the next month, albeit less intense but still debilitating. Bottom line, it was a storm.
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However, this too has passed! Ami, myself and Ami's brother, Natan, will be flying to the U.S. this Wednesday for another round of laser treatments. After that we will God willing bring Ami back to college for his Fall semester. David is recuperating, but slowly. We are understanding that this will take much patience, wisdom and most of all prayer. In the meantime, we are slowly getting back to work, and to a more normal routine.
We received a notice that there was an update to a file that is made available on the internet by the Israeli police for crime victims, called the "Mena" File. In English it stands for the "Information Network for Crime Victims" and it updates the progress of the legal proceedings and important facts of your case. Well, it was finally updated to include the sentencing of Jack Teitel, and it stated that he was sentenced to 99 years in jail! (We thought it was 80 years, but apparently it is a 99 year sentence). It also said that he was divorced, (a new development), and that he would be eligible to request a pass to leave jail for a holiday and to ask for parole only after 2/3 of his sentence was fulfilled, which is 60 years from now. It gave the name of the prison where he is incarcerated as well.
Meanwhile, as you know, the situation in the Middle East is unprecedented, with war, violence, turmoil and uncertainty in Syria and Egypt, as well as the beginning of new "peace talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. No one on the ground here expect these talks to accomplish anything but a new intifada. We are reminded of this truth:
Deuteronomy 33:26-27
There is no one like the God of Jeshurun,
Who rides the heavens to help you,
And in His excellency on the clouds.
The eternal God is your refuge,
And underneath are the everlasting arms.
We trust in that refuge and in God's loving care, expressed here as His everlasting arms, ready to catch us when we fall, enfolding us in His embrace.
Yours in Yeshua,
Leah
BEHIND THE SCENES
Behind the scenes when David was going through his operations and emergency, Ami was very ill as well. In Israel this summer many people fell prey to some extremely virulent stomach flu/viruses that even put them in the hospital, and the night before David's second emergency operation, Ami began vomiting and having diarrhea non stop for 9 hours. I had fallen asleep and was awakened at about 11:30 PM by my cell phone ringing. It was Ami calling me from his bedroom, too weak to even get out of bed, to let me know he had called the ambulance for himself! I threw on some clothes, ran downstairs and opened the locked gate and door to our house to let the paramedics in who had already arrived. We traveled to the emergency room of a large hospital about ½ an hour from Ariel, and sure enough he was suffering from dehydration!
Between blood tests and receiving two large bags of IV fluid, we finally got back home at 6 AM. We both went right to bed, but two hours later at 8 AM I began getting phone calls that David had been taken back into the operating room. One of my sons, also named Ariel, drove me to the hospital where David was, an hour drive from my house. My daughter and son-in-law also met me there. My daughter was able to stay with me the whole day until the evening as we struggled to find out what had really happened to David. Her husband took the day off of work (he is the owner of a meat business) to wait until the operation ended, and then went home to pick up their children from kindergarten and nursery school and take care of them. On top of the trauma of the day, in the back of my mind I was also worried about Ami, but could only place him on God's hands.
Ami doesn't even remember that next day and for the next three days he slept and woke up only to to use the bathroom and drink water. It took him a week to begin to feel better, but in the meantime he struggled to help me as much as he could as I was struggling to help David. I would be at the hospital for 12 or 13 hours with David, and then rush home to try to ensure that Ami wasn't getting dehydrated again, and to try to get some nutrition into him. He lost a lot of weight, and then actually had two relapses of the virus throughout the next month, albeit less intense but still debilitating. Bottom line, it was a storm.
MORE NEWS
However, this too has passed! Ami, myself and Ami's brother, Natan, will be flying to the U.S. this Wednesday for another round of laser treatments. After that we will God willing bring Ami back to college for his Fall semester. David is recuperating, but slowly. We are understanding that this will take much patience, wisdom and most of all prayer. In the meantime, we are slowly getting back to work, and to a more normal routine.
We received a notice that there was an update to a file that is made available on the internet by the Israeli police for crime victims, called the "Mena" File. In English it stands for the "Information Network for Crime Victims" and it updates the progress of the legal proceedings and important facts of your case. Well, it was finally updated to include the sentencing of Jack Teitel, and it stated that he was sentenced to 99 years in jail! (We thought it was 80 years, but apparently it is a 99 year sentence). It also said that he was divorced, (a new development), and that he would be eligible to request a pass to leave jail for a holiday and to ask for parole only after 2/3 of his sentence was fulfilled, which is 60 years from now. It gave the name of the prison where he is incarcerated as well.
Meanwhile, as you know, the situation in the Middle East is unprecedented, with war, violence, turmoil and uncertainty in Syria and Egypt, as well as the beginning of new "peace talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. No one on the ground here expect these talks to accomplish anything but a new intifada. We are reminded of this truth:
Deuteronomy 33:26-27
There is no one like the God of Jeshurun,
Who rides the heavens to help you,
And in His excellency on the clouds.
The eternal God is your refuge,
And underneath are the everlasting arms.
We trust in that refuge and in God's loving care, expressed here as His everlasting arms, ready to catch us when we fall, enfolding us in His embrace.
Yours in Yeshua,
Leah