The Angels Are Rejoicing!

THE ANGELS ARE REJOICING!! Meet one of my many outstanding nurses from Pali Momi Medical Center and newest sister in the Lord, Kira! I'll never tire of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ or witnessing the power of the Gospel to transform lives!!!

And for those of you who are interested, I have attached an update on what I have officially dubbed, "Bob's Most Excellent Adventure"! Enjoy! 

Aloha, Friends! 

Thanks for your loving phone calls, emails, TMs, FB posts and faithful prayers during my surgery and recovery. You’ll never know how much your expressions of love, encouragement and friendship mean to me, to Beckyand to our family as we navigate this new and unfamiliar adventure!

As most of you know, I was discharged from Pali Momi Medical Center on Oahu on Thursday morning and Becky and I enjoyed an additional two days on Oahu before returning to Kauai this afternoon to begin a month-long recuperation from my surgery. We enjoyed walking along our favorite beaches, visiting our childhood haunts, giving thanks for God’s many blessings, recounting our family and ministry highlights, spending time with precious friends and family, talking and praying about the future, and just enjoying being together as best friends! 

Unfortunately, despite a very successful and well executed robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy by Dr. Charles Kim and his wonderful team, the pathology report on the tissue surrounding my prostate was less than stellar. While my aggressive cancer hasn't yet metastisized, it has spread, like dandelion seeds in the wind, and taken root in my bladder and surrounding lymph nodes and, in all likelihood, in the rest of my lymphatic system and possibly other organs. 

I will be meeting with my urologist, Dr. Peter Tran, on Kauai this coming Thursday to follow up on my surgery and to get a referral for an appropriate oncologist to help me map out a treatment strategy that will likely include radiation, hormone therapy and chemotherapy. We also have implemented some alternative non-medical therapies including health supplements along with a modified vegan diet in an effort to slow the cancer and heal my body.

Despite the rather cloudy forecast, I continue to enjoy God's perfect peace and indescribable joy in the midst of my new journey and have had dozens and dozens of opportunities to love, encourage, pray for and evangelize those around me. It’s been nothing less than a wonderful, fruitful and spiritually invigorating adventure and I’m fully embracing it and loving every minute of it! Without a doubt, God has heard your prayers and intercessions and is doing "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us (Ephesians 3:20)!

Along with encouraging and praying for many of the 6th floor staff at Pali Momi, it was a special privilege for Becky and me to lead one of my nurses, Kira (pictured below), to Christ just before being discharged on Thursday! She was so open, so ready and so grateful to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ, repent of her sins, ask the Father for forgiveness and receive Jesus into her heart as her Lord and Savior! What a thrill it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ and to be commissioned as ambassadors of the message of reconciliation through the finished work of Christ on the cross! Consequently, aggressive cancer is my new pulpit and I plan to use it preach the gospel, to encourage the saints and to advance the Kingdom of God by any and every means possible!

I love you all more than I can say! The Lord is good all the time and I take enormous pleasure in bringing attention, honor and praise to our Savior and King through this unexpected yet beautiful platform to reveal and highlight His name, His glory and the praiseworthiness of His works! 

Let me close with a word of encouragement from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 that I find visionary and inspiring: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Your brother and forever grateful friend,

Bob