A somewhat sad Sunday

At Connect Church this morning it proved to be a somewaht sad morning service. A visiting preacher bought the message. He preached that "God can bring order out of chaos". It was an inspiring message. When he was finished he read out a letter stating that Ps Russell Harper and his wife Nikki would no longer continue as senior ministers of the church. No specific reasons were given except to say that "due to ongoing circumstances", Russell could no longer continue in his present role and was standing down immediately and that this sunday would be the last at the Church for him and Nikky. There was no hint of any misconduct, but apparently "circumstances" were the problem. do not know what those circumstances are but I feel sorry for them as they seem like really nice people.

There was bad news concerning Kevin Furness. Apparently his condition has worsened. Kevin had a CT scan today which showed that he has had a stroke - not a catastrophic stroke, but still a stroke. Effects of the stroke are of course unknown - but it was a left sided stroke which affects things like vision and movement. There may be little effect for him, or there may be lots - nobody knows yet. Also unknown is when he had the stroke - it may have been last Saturday or may have been Wednesday.

Also of concern is that he has a major chest infection and liver and kidney problems. When they try and reduce the sedation his blood pressure has problems and his heart is also unstable during this time.

Today they stopped kidney filtration for a while during the CT scan and tried to use that time to assess whether he could do without the filtration. This proved not to be the case so he is back on the kidney machine.

He is booked in for a tracheotomy early this week to be able to manage his ventilation better. If he wakes up and finds large tubes in his mouth and down his throat this causes further stress, so they're removing that stress by doing this.

So Kevin needs 24 hour prayer - so does the family. We must all keep praying.