Prayers Please

Hello all,

I am writing this to ask for prayer for our family over the next while. We found out some pretty shocking, disgusting and scary news about Paul's sister last night from her boyfriend. As most of you know J has a problem with alcohol and P & I thought that things were under control. Well we found out last night just how out of control the situation really is. I think I felt every emotion under the sun last night and am pretty much just numb and in shock today over what we heard. We later found out that Paul's mom knew most of what had happened but apparently know one thought that P & I should know, until J's boyfriend decided that he could no longer deal with things on his own. We held an intervention last night at our place with J and her boyfriend, Paul's mom, P & I and our friend Trevor (who is an Aux RCMP officer who was involved in an incident with J on Saturday night) he is also a counsellor who mediated last night for us.

J has agreed to get into a treatment centre to deal with her problems and we are looking to go to family counselling as well as there are many more issues that need to be resolved and needed to be resolved years ago but never were.

I am asking for prayer for strength for J as she begins to deal with everything and that she will follow through with the treatment. I am also asking for Communication between P and his mom and I and J as there were trust issues that came up last night. I am also asking for strength for P and I to survive this as we have been dealing with this for 10 years with his family and he and I don't always handle this well togethor. It sounds as though he is more open to talking about it with me and he knows that he has the support of our friends as well.

Please keep us in your prayers as this will be an extremely difficult time for all of us and we know that with all your support and the love of God we will get through this and hopefully for good. J knows that this will be a lifetime struggle for her and I have so much respect for her boyfriend for sticking by her side for the last 4 years and for having the courage to call her family togethor and divulge all the information we heard even though she has taken him to hell and back more than once but as he said last night "I love the sober J unconditionally" as we all do.
Thanks.

Updates

Well it has been a while since I have updated this so I thought I would fill everyone in on what has been happening in the lives of Paul and Tammi for the past few weeks or so!

We had a wonderful visit with Paul's Aunt and Uncle and the time seemed to fly past on us. I did a lot of cooking and found I really enjoyed it which surprised me (and it was all really good or everyone was being REALLY polite!!). We took them up to Whistler for a day and had lunch, a picnic at Crescent Beach, Vancouver Art Gallery, the Cranberry Festival and to a Vancouver Giants game and had Garth and Mary over for dinner as well. We had a lot of down time and spent much of it just talking and laughing. It was wonderful to spend the time with them and they want to fly us over again next year for as much time as we can spare - about 2 weeks with the other holiday we already have planned. There were many tears shed at the airport when we dropped them off and we miss them like crazy.

We also have a new addition to our family - we have a new kitten (we really are planning on having real children one day in case anyone is wondering and no we are not going to become crazy cat people!!!) Paul was the one that really pushed for this cat just so that everyone is aware of that!! The kitten is 12 weeks old and is a holy terror, I don't think it stops running around - only to eat and poop! It is really cute, orange in color with big blue eyes and in comparison to Lucky is tiny. She is not too impressed with it so far and we are hoping that it will work out so that we can keep both. We have an arrangement with the person we got it from that if it does not work out we can give him back to her. We also need help naming it as right now it is just being called "little cat" and neither of us want that name to stick! So if anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

This past weekend was spent again with more family, this time it was Paul's mom's family that was down for 5 days. It was really great to see them and hopefully we will see them in May of next year. It is his aunt's 70th birthday on May 11th and they are planning on doing a surpise party for her and another of Paul's aunts is going to use her airmiles to fly Paul and I up to Terrace for the weekend as there is no way we could afford to do so on our own right now and they really want us both to be there for it. I hope that the time works out as Dad and Heather are looking at May for our trip to Mexico.

Work is busy for both Paul and myself and shows no signs of slowing down which is good but I am starting to have to take work home in the evenings as I am so busy during the days.