Health Concerns (by Thom)

Fatigue, frequent stomach issues, persistent joint achyness: For the last several years I've just assumed they were the 'cost of doing business' living in a very hot third-world country. Each one of the issues is easily explained by things like the water, the stress of missions work, or temperatures constantly over 100 degrees. After all, I first took notice of most of these issues 4 years ago when we moved to Africa. It was a little odd, though, that while we were on furlough this past spring that many of the symptoms were still present most of the time. I still didn't think much about them until recently; you start to just accept certain annoyances into your life and forget about them.
However, I recently was talking with my mom and she mentioned that those issues (and a few others I'm more hesitant to publicly talk about) are consistent with Celiac's Disease, a condition that is in my family. Celiacs' bodies can't process gluten and it manifests itself in sever odd ways. I did a bunch of web research and talked to a German doctor located here in Dakar, Senegal and ended up having blood work run to a lab. The results came back negative but this test has a very high 'false-negative' rate. We've decided to take on a gluten-free diet in our house anyway for a trial run and the results so far have been very encouraging. I can get up and down off the floor to read with or play with the girls much easier and feel more energized. I also have had fewer stomach issues, I think.
The change in diet has been somewhat more of a life-style change in our house. No more bread, cookies, cakes, spaghetti, lasagna, Raman noodles (this one makes me very sad), or anything else made with wheat. We just received a box from the US from my parents which provided a few alternative ingredients to help Amanda with her cooking. In some ways we're really blessed to be living in Africa with this issue since so much of our food is cooked from scratch. In other ways, it's very difficult since we can't get a lot of the substitute ingredients that are readily available in the US or Europe.
Please keep us in your prayers. Pray for me that my body will respond to this change in diet or that we'll have a clear sign that this isn't the source of the problem. Pray also for Amanda as she struggles to find creative ways to adapt in the kitchen to these changes.