I was a little concerned that Thanksgiving might be a little hard to celebrate for out family this holiday season! However, the opposite has held true and who do we have to a thank? Jesus! Thank you Jesus for joy and fellowship despite of hardship! Janni said that she had been sitting in her car one afternoon feeling joyful and marveling at the fact that she really had not a whole lot to be joyful about. She looked to God in that instant and said to Him something like "it is because of you that I have joy"! She than met a woman who expressed sympathy over Kole's diagnoses and Janni was able to give testimony concerning God's kindness and graciousness in giving joy in the midst of hardship! The Sprunger/Conley/Keller clan were all able spend several days together over Thanksgiving. Kole was full of smiles and fun! His big cousin, Josiah, enjoyed teaching Kole moves in the "art of sword play"! Josiah was an encouraging coach. Kole, beamed his thrill on his face, when told he was performing "good moves"! The kids are use to going to McDonalds with Grandma and Grandpa, when they get together here in Bluffton. So, of course the suggestion was made to go to McDonalds. Kole responded with a grin, "not with me around----if you want to be around me you are going to have to eat healthy"! He eats his organic, vegetable laden meals with thankfulness and smiles! He is proud of his diet and feels that he will gain strength and health from the discipline. Do I need to mention he is five, with the maturity of a fifteen year old! Janni and Steve believe God is leading them in every way for Kole's treatment! You see God paving the way in Kole's heart as well! God does not miss any details in His plan and in His purpose! We might over look a child's acceptance in what is good for them, but God does not! There is a huge commitment involved in Kole's health regiment on Janni and Steve. First, there is a major cost involved financially in feeding Kole organic foods and in purchasing his Protecel and glyconutrients. Also, there is planning and time commitment in preparing healthy wholesome meals. Not to mention, the regiment of timing his intake of Protocel. Kole is to have the high antioxident drink in his body at all times. That means he gets it every four hours and has to be awaken every morning at five to take it!! Janni and Steve spend every spare minute filling capsules with Kole's glyconutrient powder (manatech). Kole has to swallow quite a few capsules in one day and never complains. He does not complain when he has to drink his "pau pau juice" or his Protocel. It is an amazing production they have going on in the midst of a busy life! They are commited parents and think nothing of the sacrifice of time and effort and cost . I wonder if I could be so disciplined and timely. God has made a way for them as well. Today, the hymn "I need Thee Every Hour" played through my mind and heart! Steve prays before meals! He prays something like Lord we do not know what is good for our bodies like you do! We are making every effort to follow you in this and ask that you bless the food we eat and you use it to make us strong and healthy. God is leading Janni and Steve to have a prayer meeting of sorts for Kole at their church. A real calling out to the Lord, in His Name, for deliverance. For we need Him and and He desires us to come together and admit our need. He cannot deliver us if we cannot admit that we have need of deliverance! We glorify Him in our need! Quite the opposite of the message the world sends. The world says to need God is weakness. The truth is we are weak and He is the only one strong! Please pray God's presence will come and fill the church during the prayer meeting! Pray that many will be blessed, God will be glorified, and His Kingdom expanded. Pray that we will desire God to deal with the cancer of our sin and that our hearts will be prepared of His holy presence. Pray for healing.

Jodi

Hello Dear Friends,
We have some good news to share. For those of you that do not know KOle and Ellie are expecting a new baby brother on March 30. On THursday, we were at the doctor's office waiting for the ultrasound and both of the children said they wanted a boy. Daddy of course said he wanted a boy too, but I said girl. And yes, for the third time I was wrong. The kids were very excited. Ellie asked if the baby was coming out now because she wants him to ride rides at Cedar POint with her. I thought that was cute.
Anyway, Kole is doing great. He is adjusting to the diet better than anyone. In fact, he tells grandpa we can't have that because it has sugar in it (Grandpa seems to forget some of the rules. THis is understandable due to the fact that we have so many. The funny thing is that Kole knows them all and if he doesn't he askes if he can have it. Isn't that sweet.) I am so proud of him. He is a trooper putting up with all the natural meds and the diet changes.
Please continue praying for KOle. God is working miracles in him. I beleive that he is going to be completely healed. We live on God's word everyday and when the devil tries to get us down we just open the Bible and God always lifts us up.
Yesturday we got a letter from the endrocronologist ( I am not sure how to spell this). It said he was borderline for the amount of hormones his glands are excreting. One of the warnings about the radiation was that is can damage the pituitary gland. This affects all the other glands. They do not know for sure, but he is not excreting enough hormones. He will have to have more tests. Please pray for this.
I also wanted to say thankyou to so many people who have helped me find recipes or websites with recipes. This was a huge stress to cook and it is getting much easier. Keep praying, believing, and trusting in the Lord.
God Bless,
The Kellers

There truly is no new news to report on Kole! I just felt led to write and encouraging word! One night a few weeks back, just after I received the report of "the cancers return", I believe God laid it on my heart, while I slept that the intense sadness and pain that I was feeling in my reality was nothing in compared to the reality of His intense power to heal! The pain was real to me and was what I was experiencing in my sleep and through my days. The pain knocked the wind out of me, and the tears threatened to overtake me morning and night. This was and is my reality! I know this first hand! God was telling me that we can know God's power in reality. God's power is reality! Just as much as pain is a reality! We can know God's power first hand! Sometimes we may have to wait for a "certain moment" when He chooses to release it, but it is a reality all the same. His power is certain. We are alive this minute due to His power. The earth is in orbit due to His power. The stars are in the heavens, and not falling to crush this earth due to His power. When we pray we get to unleash His power over our very lives. The church member at the Brooklyn Tabernacle church in New York City are praying for Kole 24/7 for thirty days straight. Now that is God's power released. How grateful we are for their sacrifice for the very life of a small boy they do not even know! We have more power in our unseen God than we have in our reality in living in this seen world. The enemy likes us to think that "pain" is the only reality. That God cannot overcome or chooses to not come to our aid. The enemy likes to deceive us into thinking that our prayers are a waste of time, that the Lord does not hear and that His will is set in stone. The enemy says the medical diagnoses sets His will and limits His will! I have been listening to a sermon in that in the day of trouble, we call upon the Lord and the Lord hears. He waits and wants us to call on His Name. Calling on His Name brings revival and life to our spiritual lives and to our future. To say we believe Jesus Saves is one thing, but to know Jesus Saves is another. It is funny how alive the Spirit is and how He will plant a song or an hymn in our heart. The hymn that has been planted in my heart today is "Jesus Saves". Part of a verse from that hymn goes ".... sing it softly through the gloom, When the heart for mercy craves; Sing in triumph o'er the tomb; Jesus saves! Jesus saves! My mother (and Janni's) and I have talked about how there is a real battle to hear the voice of the Lord over the voice of the enemy! We are in a battle for our very spiritual lives and we proclaim that "Jesus Saves"! Can I add that He is here and He hears! Praise Him!

Jodi

Janni and I had a wonderful talk on the phone Saturday. She told a cute story about Kole getting the idea to entertain guests, in his home, by setting up trip wires and traps. Janni, was his first victim which gave Kole much pleasure! She tripped right over his wire after being groggy from a nap. We are a family (Sprunger side at least), who do not always pay attention to our surroundings. So, we make good "victims"! When Janni was a little girl she was such a live wire. Her feet could hardly keep up with her will to run free. I can remember a friend saying that she tripped over cracks in the sidewalk. Then as she grew those "sickening" long legs, in Jr. High and High School, her "graceful falling" only became much more pronounced and came with more force! She of course made up for it with her beauty, charm, and bubbling kindness! Anyway, God was just preparing her to be a fun mother for Kole someday! It is good to laugh and think of fun! It seems that when things get serious the laughter gets replaced by tears. We are not a family who has it all together! We are not a family who is always happy! We are not a family who knows exactly what to do! We are a very human family, with all kinds of trials and temptations! In fact, if any of you are out there hurting and do not know what to do-- we could cry right with you and pray for you from the heart! Sometimes, it takes pain and failure to really see ourselves for who we are! We can also pour out grace and mercy on others, because that is just what we have required! God does not look for fake perfection, but for brokeness. This song just popped into my head from Micah 6:8 concerning what God requires and looks for in us. It says "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God". Walking humbly with God is brokeness before Him. In our humble state, we require much mercy, enjoy much mercy, and feel no choice but to give others mercy. Janni told me that this world no longer has it's hold on her as it once did! To give up striving for perfection in this earth and on it--- to trade it in for fervently seeking a perfect God and His perfect true home. That brings freedom and guaranteed success! It is His image alone that is worthy to be praised. Ours, we work so hard to build, only to have it come crashing down on us in one way or another! Health use to be my "image" which I took pride in. The tower of Babel, in the book of Genesis, was a tower that was built to make a name for man. It was left a failure and unfinished! We will not fail building God's image, which might I say is already complete and built. We can make grandiose claims about the power and might of our Lord and Savior and be confident He can fulfill it! We can not trust in ourselves, but He is completely trustworthy. We are control freaks and sometimes think nobody can do it better than "moi"! That is when the world comes crashing down and we ask ourselves what happened and how did I fail? God never fails! He allows our failures to prove His perfection. Than, he pours out his undeserved grace, mercy, and love. He is great at bailing us out! God's sovereignty prevents us from beating ourselves up with would haves, could haves, and should haves! All this with Kole has a Kingdom purpose that we finite human beings cannot get our minds wrapped around! Someday we will see, we will glorify the Lord , and we will marvel at His plan in complete understanding. We are only required to trust in Him. Trust in what we cannot see, for what we cannot see is eternal. What we see is temporary. This is our call as a family--- to trust, believe, endure and fix our eyes on Jesus. Joy will return to us! God will be glorified! We will take great joy in testifying to His goodness and mercy. May we humbly pray as never before and delight the Lord!

Jodi

Boy do I love my sister, Janni, and her last post was beautiful. Anyway, as you can imagine it has been difficult to fight the lump in my stomach and I cannot deny my tears. The funny thing is that today God pointed out to me something profound, as I sat in gloom. God does not have a dark cloud of depression, despair, doubt or death in His being! We as a people follow the world and the evil one's lead to despair when bad news comes. God does feel sadness, but there is no darkness in Him. It says in 1 John 1:1 "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by truth". So, why follow the darkness when we do not have to! Choose the Light ! The other Sunday we were studying the Israelites in Egypt during the time of the ten plagues. We followed the ten plagues and noticed that God only allowed His people to experience the first three annoying plagues, but protected the Hebrews from the rest of the plagues, which were very detrimental! When God called for the plague of darkness, only the Egyptians experienced the darkness. At the same time God's people experienced the light! We came to see that being born into the family of God has real tangible benefits here on this earth, as well as in heaven. We are able to draw a distinct line. The evil one represents: darkness, despair, death, deceit, and destruction. The God of the universe represents: life, light, love, hope, mercy, grace, joy, peace, deliverance, and life eternal. There are always two sides. There, of course, is difficulty in this life as a Christian, as anyone else, but "joy comes in the morning". Jesus, too, had the difficulty of knowing his death on the cross was eminent. He knew the day in advance. He knew that once that "one day" was over it would be "it is finished", and joy would come to all the people of the world. For on the day of Christ's resurrection, sin and death would be conquered forever. We have life now and forever! We also have access to a powerful healing God because of His Son. We can go to God claiming His Son and we have God's ear. The book of Acts, in the New Testament, records the healing of a man at the gate Beautiful. In Acts 16, it says that "It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see". We not only have the Light and Life of God, but we have access to His power to heal in the name of Jesus! We sometimes do not realize the privilege we have in Him, and only see the darkness that surrounds! I keep thinking of Peter as he was attempting to walk on the water. As long as he kept his gaze fixed on Jesus he was fine, but as soon as he let the "waves of this world" intimidate him, he started to sink. It is a fight to the finish to keep our gaze fixed on Christ. We will have victory if we pursue Christ, and in a way ignore this world. Christ is a much brighter future! Christ is Kole's bright future. Lamentations 2:19 "....pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord; lift up your hands to Him for the life of your little ones".
May we all walk in the Light! Through Christ, gloom is lifted! Praise His Name!

Jodi

I think my sister and I think alike. It seems we can go on forever without a post and then we both post something. Well I have just felt led to tell everyone about church this past Sunday. We go to the Chapel in Sandusky and right now we are asking for help from God to lead us as we are growing. On Sunday, God knew that sermon was just for us. It was on miracles. Is that not a sign from God. Our pastor made some awesome points that really hit me at the heart. He talked about some statistics that were amazing. Did you know that something like 70% of Americans beleive in miracles. It is one thing to beleive and another thing to trust it will be done. Our pastor gave this example. THere was a man that put a tight rope across the Niagra Falls and walked across. He got so much attention that he thought of other things to do. One time he went half way across his tight rope and ate his breakfast. Another time he took his manager on his back across the tight rope. For thrills, he also took a wheel barrow across and brought it back to the crowd cheering him on. He asked the crowd if they beleived he could do it with someone in the wheel barrow. The crowd cheered yes, but not one would volunteer to do it. This is like God's miracles. We beleive God can do them but we do not trust that it will be done. I must admit this is something I have struggles with. I question whether he is going to answer my prayers in the manner I am asking. WHere is my trust? I beleive every word in the bible and it says in Hebrews 11;6 "beleive that there is a God and that He rewards those who sincerely seek him." God wants to please us but we have to be willing to trust him and have faith. God is good and I believe that God will heal Kole.

On Somewhat a lighter note, God has spoken to Steve and I about what we need to be doing with Kole. We have completely changed our diets. This is not so easy. He cannot (although this is a whole family change) have any sugar (sugar feeds tumors), dairy products, and wheat. He is limited to the fruit he can have because of all of the sugar it has in it along with meat. Basically, our diet consists of brown rice, one apple, one piece of cheese, very little organic meat, blueberries, raspberries, and vegetable. If you have any great recipes that can help me out I would love to try them. I have none.

We are also continuing with our glyconutrients that he has been on for awhile and we have started something new called Protocel. It is amazing how he has put this in our minds and led us to this non toxic treatment. Way back when we were almost done with radiation a boy who was just beginning radiation started on this Protocel. We were interested in what they had to say about it but we never went much further with it. Then a week before we left for St. Judes I was at a friends house and a woman was talking about her father having Lung cancer and he was not given very long to live. He went on Protocel and now the tumors cannot be found and he doing ok. Wouldn't you know that God sent her to put that in the back of my mind because soon after the doctor told us the grim news I thought about Protocel. We did a ton a research and God kept leading us to other people that informed us about it. I can actually say that I am so excited about how GOd is working in our lives. I cannot tell you how he contunues to put people in our lives to lead us in His direction. God is setting Kole up for an awesome miracle. We believe and we trust in Him.

Please continue to pray for Kole and tell anyone you can think of to pray for him to. Pray is the way to faith, faith is the way to trust, and trust is the way to miracles.
Love you all,
Janni

"God is good all the time" is a song that I learned while visiting Colorado Springs, Colorado. This is the song that I learned in the midst of learning, that my nephew, Kole has three spots on his brain. God remains good even in the midst of pain. "God is good" is what, my sister Janni, has repeated over and over to countless audiences over the last months! God is good and that will never change! The best news is that God is in the business of bringing good lasting change in us! We have so many problems in this fallen world, which cancer is only one of million. God being good never changes. However, He desires to work change by bringing good in our lives. He works change to free us from our many problems and pain. Problems we just can not fix! I have learned that the quote by Jim Cymbala is true. He says that he "discovered an astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He cannot resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him". We all have to admit that we are desperate to see Kole healed completely, however there is not one human being out there who has the ability to heal Kole's cancer. Here we find ourselves, weak! God is the only one who can! He is the only one who can speak the world into existence in six days. He has the only blood that can wipe out all the sins, of all the peoples, of all the generations, since time has begun and on! He is the only one who can say "I am bigger than that"! We need to have faith to believe "God is who he says he is and can do what he says he can do", for that is what God is looking for! He wants us to take our eyes off of ourselves and our world and look to the God who sits enthroned around the circle of the earth! It says in Isaiah 40:22 in regards to God's power that "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers". It also says in Isaiah 2:22 to "stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?". We can I say "I am a bigger grasshopper than you!" But, we are still all grasshoppers in power. Compare us to the magnitude of God and it is a laugh! I just love Malachi 4:2 which says "But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall". God offers us release from all our troubles. Troubles we "grasshoppers" cannot fix or get free from! Our help comes from our unseen God and not from seen "grasshoppers". In 2 Corinthians 4:18 it says "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" and can I add powerful. I say "Lord reveal yourself to us in all your great might and glory". Pray to the God seated on the throne to heal Kole, as only He can! May we admit our weaknesses and allow God to release us from all the emptiness and problems we have as well. May we all be "released from our stalls" and leap!

Jodi

Greetings from Memphis,
As most of you are well aware that we arrived back at St. Jude on MOnday night for the first three month check up. Yesturday the news was not what we were hoping for. The MRI showed three spots in a different area of his brain. According to the doctors, the cancer is back. Thankfully, his spine and spinal fluid came back negative. WE are in need of a lot of prayers as we have a lot of decisions to make. Our faith right now is the only thing that is holding us up. I am living on the story of Jehosophat in 2 Chronicles 20 where death is upon him and his nation. He prays a wonderful prayer and GOd answers by saying Do not be afraid nor dismayed for the battle is not yours, but God's. In verse 17 it says take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverence the Lord will give you. God told me way back when this all began that Kole will be just fine. He has lead us and we have faith that he is fighting this battle for Kole. He is not done with Kole. During this time Kole has touched so many lives BUt we must rely on prayer and Gods ultimate power.
For all of our prayer warriors that are reading this please do not mention any of this to Kole. He is not aware of the situation at this point. This is another one of the prayers we are praying.
God bless,
The Keller's