(From William Pratney, Winkie’s son) Okay, so much has happened since my last post! On Saturday, a whole crew of about 14 people came out from His Way Church and helped us with the house and property – water blasting, vacuuming, cleaning, gardening, clearing out trash they were truly a force to be reckoned with! We haven’t had the time to really clean the place up since we got back, and the His Way crew was just truly the Church in action. Mom and I are still trying to work out ways to cut back on the work time in caring for Dad. We don’t want to leave him at home alone, for one because if someone calls they probably for the most part won’t understand him, and two, if anything bad should happen…so we’re kind of wearing ourselves out a bit (I feel) by doing double-duty so to speak. Mom also hasn’t felt confident driving on her own, which means every time she goes somewhere, we all have had to go. Money has been coming in (praise God!) and we were finally able to get some car insurance today. I’ve also bee helping Mom get back in the drivers seat, so hopefully she’ll be confident enough to drive on her own (especially now that we have that insurance), giving me more down time and allowing us to divvy up the day better. Also, Rob and Caroline Deluca (His Way), as well as others have been bringing/sending food over, so (praise God!) we haven’t been in want – we’ve had an abundance, and I really see not only God’s provision but Christ’s Church in action towards us in this. We’ve had a super-abundance – God’s not allowing us to be in want. In fact, we were even able to help a few others out a little from the abundance that we ourselves had received. So what about Winkie?

Okay, so most of you probably just want to know, “How is Winkie doing?” He’s doing alright. Not awesome. But alright. Sometimes it appears his progress is digressing. At other times it amazes us how in-tune he is with subject matter and conversation. He still struggles with getting the right words out trying to say what he wants to say. His long-term memory seems to be coming back alright. It’s the everyday words like, “fork”, “pencil” etc. that he really seems to struggle with. He’s far from where he needs to be (in my opinion). But some good news is there will be both an occupational therapist and a speech therapist coming to see him here at home once a week. They are being sent from Middlemore hospital, and it’s provided courtesy of the New Zealand government. The occupational therapist will (hopefully) help him to structure his day better, organizing things like getting up in the morning, having a shave and shower, getting dressed, making breakfast, etc. The speech therapist (who we met with yesterday) will be working with him on his speech. There’s probably more to it than that (forgive me speech therapists!) but she’ll basically be trying to help him effectively say what he wants to say.

I want to say again a loud THANK YOU for all the encouraging words, prayers of faith, and donations being sent in for us at this time.

We’ve still got a long way to go in terms of Winkie’s recovery, but God can turn things around in an instant. Thanks for believing with us for Winkie’s full recovery.

God bless, and thank you for your prayers.

William