Pray.

Dear friends and fam,
You know that I’m not a big “prayer chain” person. And certainly not a forward person. But this one truly grips our hearts since a friend and former neighbor of ours, Manish Desai, is facing a very serious prognosis of cancer with the probability of losing his left hand.

Manish and Emily were our neighbors in Pasadena and they are every bit as great as Marshall (our other neighbor) describes them below. He is 31 and they just had their first son Dillan while we lived there in December of 2005.

It’s hard to know how to pray, or what to pray, or even why to pray when situations like this come to such wonderful people. But still, I ask only that you do pray, for these total strangers to you. I ask that you plead with God to spare his life, and even to spare his hand.

Read Marshall’s email below for the whole story.
-craig

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Marshall Allen
Date: May 8, 2007 1:30 AM
Subject: Urgent prayer request
To:

I’m writing you with a heavy heart, my dear friends and family, after
getting a call from some of our most beloved friends in the world, Manish
and Emily Desai.

Manish has just been diagnosed with a rare and grave form of cancer that’s
growing in his left hand. He’s only 31, and the prognosis is very bad.
Doctors say the best treatment option is to amputate his hand somewhere
around the forearm, and then put him through six months of chemotherapy.
They say this approach will give him the best chance of surviving, which
they estimate at 60 percent.

I’m writing to urge you to plead with God on behalf of Manish, Emily and
their 18-month-old son Dillan. God can do anything, and our first prayer is
that Manish would be healed if that’s God’s will. If not that, then we pray
that God will spare his life, even if that means losing his hand.

You know it’s bad when amputating your hand is the upside of the equation,
and for Manish this is especially hard since he’s left-handed, and he’s an
architect. His livelihood and professional dreams are attached to that left
hand, so please pray that God would walk with him emotionally through this
loss, and give him the tenacity to teach himself to do everything he can do
today, but with his right hand. Please pray for Emily, too. She’s an eternal
optimist and the kind of woman who can do anything, but this is a real
trial.

The cancer has not spread elsewhere in his body, so after the surgery,
please pray that the chemo treatments work and the cancer never returns.
Obviously, from the estimated chances of survival I mentioned above, the
amputation is just the beginning of this trial.

I don’t know what else to ask of you, but please pray for our dear friends.
God cares about us and He listens when we pray. We’ve walked through life
with Manish and Emily for the past seven years, since we moved to Pasadena.
We love them and they’re going through an intense time of suffering, with
more to come. Manish was our first visitor at the hospital when Cody was
born, in Dec. 2004. I’ve attached a picture of Manish and Cody so you can
see who he is.

The incredible thing through all of this is that already God’s glory is
evident in Manish and Emily’s attitudes. They’ve only been dealing with this
a little more than a week, but Manish said he knows that God intends to use
this to teach him and help him grow. His attitude is bringing glory to God,
even in the midst of his grief and struggle. Manish was raised Hindu, and
many in his family are not followers of Jesus, so please pray that God would
also use Manish and Emily to draw them to salvation.

I confess that I often am consumed with the day-to-day drama and
trivialities life because I’m so self-consumed. It’s a real struggle to
hunger continually for a God-centered perspective. Times like these make me
yearn for heaven. It’s truly our only hope when we fully understand the
depths of suffering here on earth. Perhaps God will also use this to waken
me from my small-minded perspective and give me a greater hunger for His
purpose and Kingdom.

I do hope you all are well and thank you for praying for our friends!

Grace and peace,

Marshall