Please add Reverend Howard Wheeler to your prayer list. He is the pastor of Pottsville ARP Church in Arkansas. See his health update below.
Over the past four weeks, I have been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer that is located principally in my stomach and lower esophagus. It is also locally advanced to some of the lymph nodes around my stomach, so considered stage 3. In the Lord’s kindness, however, it has not moved into any other organs in the abdomen or into the intestinal tract.
The treatment for this cancer will involve chemotherapy and immunotherapy, which I will begin this week. If the initial four rounds of treatment are effective in reducing the cancer in the lymph nodes, then I will have surgery to remove some or all of my stomach followed by additional treatments. This will be the best curative outcome, apart from a remarkable healing work of the Lord.
Please convey my situation to the Synod for prayer.
I would ask for the following things as immediate prayer needs.
- Improved ability to eat.
- Effective initial treatment that makes me a candidate for the gastrectomy.
- The effectiveness of the integrative cancer protocol that I am following through diet and other actions.
- Physical strength to continue to work as much as is possible.
- For my family and congregation as they work hard to support me during this time.
I have been given a difficult diagnosis, but I have good doctors and, more importantly, a Great Physician. I have hope in this for earthly healing and more years of productive ministry. I am not afraid for myself because I know that my Redeemer lives and all my hope rests in Him.
Pray for me, my family and the Pottsville congregation as we walk through this together.
In Christ,
Howard Wheeler