Each year Camp Forest Springs has students from across the country and around the world, come and learn what it is to be a leader in a Christian Camp setting.  Today camp graduated 11 students from Spain, Canada, Tennessee, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia and Wisconsin.  It has been a great year and no doubt a learning experience for all of them.  As always it is sad to see them leave and yet that is part of the program, another class comes Memorial Day weekend. 

For those of you who follow this blog on a weekly basis, you can be praying especially for Matt.  Saturday May 3rd is the Annual Garage Sale, which is a part of his responsibilities with the Gift In Kind program at camp.  This annual event will include about a thousand man hours both on the part of all the staff at camp and volunteers who come in to help make it a success.  It is not uncommon for camp to see between 300 and 400 people at the sale.  Matt is also working on two major project which are due this week with two area newspapers highlighting upcoming events related to the 50th Anniversary.  It makes for long days and lot of work but is worth every minute at the end of the week. 

As many of you know, being a part of the staff of Camp Forest Springs, requires us as a family to raise the needed financial support to live.  After much prayer and searching for how to publish this, we were reminded this morning doing devotions as a family that God is in control and knows our needs and knew our needs before we were knew they were going to be needs.  So we can rest in the comfort that it brings.

A major need for the us right now that we are asking everyone who knows us and visits our website is the need to raise additional monthly support.  Many of you have been asking for how you can pray for us specifically, well here is a specific request we have.  The need to raise additional funds is not for the purpose of being able to put money into savings for rainy day activities but to replace support which was lost in the final quarter of 2007. 

So there you have it, we are excited to see what God has in store for our family in 2008 and how He will lead us in our ministry to our neighbors and those we come in contact with at camp. 

We found out on Thursday that James has APML, which is one of seven different kinds of AML.  This was in a sense an answer to prayer as the treatment for APML is pretty straight forward and has a good success rate. Once they determined that it was in fact this kind of cancer that he has, they began treatment right away.  He started out on four days of Vitamin A pills along with two other substances to help prepare his blood for the chemo.  Then on Sunday he began recieving his first round of chemo.  He will recieve this treatment for seven days, followed by 4-6 weeks in the hospital for recovery. This is just the first phase of treatment.  His entire treatment will last a year.  If you are interested in following the process or sending him encouragement, check out his care page at http://www.uwhealth.org.  Go to “care pages”.  Name: CarePageJames Password:mulletwig
Since his care page is set up, this will be the last update I post on our sight. We greatly thank you for your prayer this coming year.

Today we recieved the news that after extensive blood work James has been diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Luekemia. There are eight different kinds of AML, and they are not yet certain which kind it is. However, because it is an agressive type of luekemia they will begin agressive treatment as soon as possible. They were planning on putting a shunt in his chest to administer his treatments and were hoping to have that done tonight. He is currently in the Madison Children’s Hospital and will most likely be there for the next five weeks. He will then be home for a few weeks before he goes back for more treatments. Because the chemo also attacks his white blood cells his immune system will be greatly compromised with each treatment. So each time he is in for treatment he will be at the hospital for several weeks while they monitor his recovery. The entire process will last for a year. Currently my mom is at the hospital with James. My dad is flying back in to Madison from the Ukraine tomorrow afternoon. The doctors have sounded very positive about the treatments, and we are trusting the Lord that his hand of healing and protection will be on James over the next several months. Our family is doing well. I think the reality of it all is still sinking in for some of us. Please keep us all in your prayers, especially James. Pray that he would be feeling better soon, and would be able to keep a positive out look as the next year of his life will be less than enjoyable. Pray for the rest of us that we would be sensitive to his needs, and have the right words at the right times. Pray for the doctors, that they would have wisdom and skill in treating James. And pray that God’s hand of healing would be on his body, that the treatment he receives would be successful in completely removing the leukemia. We know that we serve an Awesome God who has all things under his control. We thank you for your prayers and will keep you updated as we have more information.

We wanted to share an urgent prayer request with all who visit our website. What a better way for us to be able to share with you our family and friends what is happening than through a massive prayer tree.

Tonight when we got home there was a message regarding James Tarp, Julie’s youngest brother.  He has been sick for about a month with sore throats, strep throat and various other colds and conditions.  Today, they took him to the local hospital in Platteville with a high grade fever.  He has lost 15 pounds to date and really wasn’t doing very good. 

The Platteville hospital did some blood work and immediately ambulanced him to Madison where we are waiting word for more blood tests to be completed and hopefully a diagnosis as to what is causing all the problems. 

To further the situation, Julie’s dad Jes Tarp is out of the country on a routine business trip to the Ukraine and will not be back until Thursday December 13. 
We will continue to add updates to the website here so you know how you can continue to pray.