Thank you for your prayers! -Update on Seth

First and foremost, we want to thank you all for your many prayers! Seth is currently doing well, and will be held in the hospital for a couple more days. He went in and has to stay by himself because of this Covid-19. Luckily we get to use technology and talk.

So what happened?

Getting ready for surgery

Wednesday, Seth woke up having severe abdominal pain in the middle of the night… needless to say, he was in the bathroom for almost 7 hours non-stop from both ends. But because the pain was in the upper right section of the abdomen, he/we thought it was a stomach infection from some food and that he would get over it in 1-3 days. Thursday passed… the pain went from a level 10, to about a 6 come that night… thinking things were “on the mend”. Seth was unable to sleep those 2 nights, then came Friday morning.

Going into the hospital-alone

The pain shifted from his upper right abdomen to his lower right, causing him to not be able to get comfortable, constant pain, and hard to breathe… and he looked at me and said; “I need to go to the hospital”.

Because of Covid-19, we had to drop him off (me and Seth’s mom), and say goodbye to him there.

They ran the scans, and found out his appendix was ruptured and immediately put him on track for surgery.

Post surgery

While in surgery, they found out his appendix turned gangrenous and was wrapped around his ileum, puss was disseminating throughout his abdomen. The doctor even repaired a hernia while he was there….

The surgery was a success. He will be given several strong antibiotics for the next couple of days to combat the infection. He will be hospitalized at least thru until Monday.

Zoom call with small group

Zoom call with another small group

As we reflect upon this… we see God working. If Nicole didn’t get sick back in December, we would have never evacuated Vanuatu, which led us to back to the USA via Australia. And because of Covid-19, a travel ban is still enacted, which hindered us from being able to leave for Vanuatu this past Tuesday. That’s right, Seth would have been feeling this pain either en-route to Vanuatu or while in Vanuatu, and to be honest, if we were in the bush, he probably would not have made it out of the country to get help in time, since the infection was spreading so quickly.

Our God is so good and gracious! We just keep thanking Him! We can never understand His true plan!

Thank you for your prayers. We love and appreciate you all.

Seth and Nicole Stokes,

Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu.