Thank you all for the many prayers and encouragement!!! Seth is stable and doing well! He is recovering at a good pace. He will be limited in movement for a few weeks but is on the mend.

The doctors were a bit concerned with the tenderness in his abdomen but are pretty certain it is from the spread of the gangrenous infection, as well as the invasive procedure of removing his appendix, along with severe inflammation. Thankfully, there was no abscess and the infection has subsided, due to several antibiotics.

We are so thankful that God has allowed us to be here in the USA during this time, which will allow Seth to recover thoroughly before returning to Vanuatu. God is gracious and worthy of all our praise!

~Seth and Nicole Stokes,

Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu

Seth was just visited by the doctor, and he said it’s too early to go back in and operate to check anything, because it would be unsafe, he’s going to hold Seth in the hospital a couple of days until he is good enough to do another CT scan.

Like the doctor said previously; an abscess would take 5-7 days after surgery to form. And so not enough time has passed, and he’s rather surprised how sensitive Seth is that area (in regards to pain in that area), which is concerning.

The Doctor said it’s unlikely Seth developed another disease, but he’s not well enough for them to go back in if they have no definitive direction. But they haven’t ruled it out yet, since there was so much gangrene.

Seth will be in the hospital until he is better/they find out what’s wrong with him.

Thank you for your prayers.

Seth and Nicole Stokes, your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu

Seth was discharged yesterday and came home. He woke up in pain this morning, in the area where his appendix was (previous pain was near the incisions); the doctor said there is a 1% chance of an abscess forming where his appendix was, which would lead to more gangrene and puss. So as of right now, Seth is in the hospital finding out what is going on inside his body, they are taking blood and are going to do scans on him. Pray that there is no abscess, but even if there is, pray that God heals him quickly, and that there are no lingering infections in his body. Thank you!

~Nicole, for Seth too

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.

This is especially for those of you who do not have Facebook. So this morning, Seth was in a lot of pain and knew needed to go to the hospital. So we rushed out to take him. They were not letting anyone in to the hospital and we just had to drop him off.

They admitted him immediately and within the hour we received news from the doctor saying that it is a good thing that we got Seth to the hospital when we did because his appendix had ruptured about 12 hours prior and had a gangrenous end on it and was infected and the infection was starting to spread. So he will be in the hospital at least overnight if not possibly over the weekend. It all depends on how he does in recovery. He is doing well and is on the mend and will be on antibiotics and IV. They are not allowing anyone to visit or go into the hospital. So I will be waiting at home to hear when we can pick him up. Please keep him in prayer as he is in the hospital! Thank you so much for all your love and support through this.

We are praising God that we are home in America during this time and that we were able to rush to the hospital. Had we been in Vanuatu and in the bush at this time, things would look a lot different. We just keep thanking God for that! God is good has has perfect timing!

Will keep everyone posted as we hear more.

Thank you!

~Nicole, for Seth too

Hello everyone!

We hope you are all staying sane in quarantine and have been able to enjoy this time at home, to some extent. It has been a good time for us to spend extra time with family, get caught up on rest, and simply learn to be content with where God has us at this time. These are different days we are all living at the moment. We wish we could be in Vanuatu helping our friends rebuild their homes and communities after the destruction of category 5 tropical cyclone Harold, that recently devastated the country. In God’s timing we will do that. But for now we wait…

Stay tuned to our Instagram feed for more pictures… @stokingthefires

Please click on the link below to read our current newsletter:

Newsletter-April, 2020

Also, here is the link to watch the livestream interview with our home Pastor, Marc Likins (mentioned in newsletter): https://livestream.com/accounts/15180731/events/7603913/videos/204260325 

Livestream

Thank you all!

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

Seth & Nicole Stokes

Many of you have asked us how we are doing… so here are the abbreviated questions and answers you may have.

1. How is Nicole doing with all of her doctor visits and medications? We have had several doctors from various fields weigh-in on Nicole’s situation. Her doctors are still processing her diagnosis and trying to run more tests to better understanding how to proceed. Nicole is currently transitioning medications from one form to another, which will hopefully have no long-term side effects. Pray that her body agrees with the new medication.
2. Medical fees? We are grateful that we have good health insurance; so far, we have only had to pay out of pocket for very minimal things.
3. Tickets to America? Our home church graciously paid for our plane tickets out of Vanuatu and to the States
4. Unexpected costs? As of now, we are paying for food and transportation during our time in the States and as we did while in Australia, which we did not plan for… these months were originally budgeted for us to be back in our house in Vanuatu until April.
5. Any losses from this trip? We are hoping that the 4-6 months’ food supply we had purchased does not spoil in the tribe while we are gone… food in Vanuatu is considerably more expensive than in the USA, FYI.
6. Any needs while you are here this time? We currently are looking forward to purchasing a vehicle; with us being here, for 2-3 months this time around, and then coming back in August for a proper furlough, we are looking forward to purchasing a vehicle that will last this term. We are looking to purchase a vehicle for $2,500, that should cover the costs; vehicle, title transfer, and new tires that the vehicle will need… we are currently using Seth’s mom car, which she is graciously allowing us to use, but we do not want to rack up miles on her vehicle.
7. How is your house? Even though a cyclone passed not too long ago in Vanuatu, thankfully we boarded up the house right before we left and are ‘assuming’ no damages occurred. We were not able to “shut down” the solar batteries for our house before we left… because it was an unplanned exit, so we are hoping the batteries and the solar equipment have no issues when we go back.
8. How are the Tiale people? We have been able to get a few messages here and there from the men Seth has been training. Right before we left, Seth gave the men a 3-month study of practical steps to grow in their Christian faith. We got word that the men have been loving their study, which is awesome! Also, “coincidentally” in late November (2019), Seth had planned all the local churches in our area to start teaching a Foundational Bible Curriculum weekly. It is approximately an 18-month program, and the men started in January… so the churches are still being fed and the men are still going deeper in our absence, praise God!
9. When do you plan on going back? As long as Nicole remains healthy and gets better, we plan on leaving at the end of April to head back to Vanuatu.
10. What have you enjoyed doing since being back? We have genuinely enjoyed all of the fellowship with people. While in Vanuatu, we do not get to meet up with people regularly; to talk in English, and to have deep spiritual conversations, so this has been quite a blessing. We hope you all do not forsake the blessing God has given to you to be able to do this regularly. It has been a great change of pace for us since being back!

Please continue to pray for Nicole and her recovery. Pray for our doctors to have wisdom and for us as a couple to know how to navigate through this time.

Thank you for your prayers! Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes

Thank you so much for all of your prayers! We have been blessed and are greatly encouraged by how Nicole has been received during this time of uncertainty. Everything is new to us, and yet, everyone has been very understanding, and has encouraged us to rest during this time.

Sorry for the delay in writing an update, but we ourselves were waiting for some “new” results and answers as we continue to visit various doctors, consult others, and wait for lab results. All of the doctors are encouraged with Nicole’s progress, and if we had to “personally evaluate” her health, we would say she is encroaching the 90% range… and if you were in communication with me in early January, there was some fear that that might never be the case. So we are praising God and are thankful for His grace!

We also received some other good news this past week, that there might be an alternative long-term medicine other than the one she is currently on, that would be significantly better for her health long-term, with less side-effects, and more importantly… won’t require monthly blood work. This new medicine would require us to get yearly lab results and not monthly! Which in our case, is quite a huge deal!

Continue to pray for wisdom as we seek to better understand Nicole’s diagnosis, and what she needs to recover, along with maintaining her health. We also received a lab result back this past week, and the doctor was quite concerned with a particular level, and is hoping it was a ‘lab error’, and not indicative of what’s going on inside of Nicole. We will be getting some new lab tests to either correct the error or confirm the possible problem… which would mean Nicole would have to go on another medication to remedy that ‘other’ issue. We are not against medicine, but we know that the less medicine the better, so let’s hope and pray there was an error in the lab.

We will be meeting with a specialist doctor who wants to try some “other” routes with Nicole, for the next month, along with continuing our monthly checkups and labs for Nicole until we head back to Vanuatu.

Thank you for your love and support! We greatly appreciate you all!

Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes.

Thank you so much for your constant prayer for Nicole during this time!

It is quite unbelievable to think that Nicole has been in the hospital for almost 30 days! She is officially being discharged today!

What does that mean?

We will be heading back to the “states” as of our tomorrow. We will head back to get Nicole 100%, or whatever that may look like. She will be on longterm medication, and will need to have regular checkups and bloodwork to make sure the medication is staying within the “therapeutic window”. So at minimum, we will be back until April for a “medical furlough”.

We will be spending the bulk of our time getting Nicole recuperated, having a good routine, and being encouraged by our home church. We might venture to see family, but that is dependent on Nicole’s recovery.

Any details?

Many of you have asked, and quite honestly we were being vague because the doctors themselves were unsure… very similar to last time back in June of 2017. Because she relapsed, this has made the doctors label her illness in the mental health category. But because of her age, onset, and overall good health, she is a-typical and does not fit the “textbook examples”. To make a long story short; she had a series of “manic episodes” in quick succession making her unable to sleep, thus becoming unwell. Living in the jungle, with no one nearby (3 hours from town), and no real medical facilities to help long term… we had to leave the country, and Nicole was even involuntarily checked into the hospital upon arrival because of how ill she was.

If you remember from her last bout with this illness, the doctors labeled it as an “infectious disease”, which is clearly not the case anymore.

Anything with the brain is a “guess-science”, there are no blood test or scans that clearly tell you what you have. But thankfully through the wisdom God has given mankind, we have medicine that can now help, and in Nicole’s case, supposedly “reduce the chances” of ever having another episode. There are some side-effects of the medication, and that is another part of the recovery process we will have to figure out.

We have a cornucopia of emotions from all of this… but one thing has not changed; we eagerly await to serve our God back in Vanuatu. One of the things that sustained us through this hardship was the affirmation of doing this work for our Lord. As Nicole was recovering, she constantly would be telling the nurses and doctors she cannot wait to go back and serve in Vanuatu. I (Seth) have never wavered in our goal and mission, although I am content with “the when” of returning, the Tiale people and Bible college have been on my mind every day.

We are not sure why God has allowed (many theological phrases one could could use here) this happen to Nicole, and we are at peace knowing, we don’t need to know. Job was never told “why”, or “saw” why God would do such a thing, and Job was far more righteous and suffered far more than us. But there is something in learning peace and patience that ties intrinsically to contentment that we cannot quite articulate to you all. We both have learned patience and peace more deeply through this event. We are content in whatever our Master has for us.

We love and appreciate you all! We look forward to seeing some of you at church this Sunday.

Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes.

We want to say thank you to everyone for their prayers. We appreciate your love for us.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Nicole has been recovering slowly, and she has been making strides in her recovery. She is still in the hospital, and will be there for at least a week longer, if not more…

Many of you hopefully enjoyed the opportunity to be with family, it was strange to not be able to celebrate Christmas together… visiting hours and other patients, etc. but tried to make the best of it, even if it was in a hospital. We read the Christmas story, shared the gospel with two other patients who were inquiring about God… I (Seth) even spent some time with the Pinero’s (late at night with them, after visiting hours).

Continue to pray as Nicole recovers, this will not be something done in a day, we now better understand what happened 2.5 years ago, so our goal is to come home for a period of time and get several opinions, and make sure we do what’s best for Nicole and her health long-term. Once we get that sorted out, we will then plan to head back to Vanuatu. But for longevity’s sake, Nicole’s health comes first.

Thank for your partnership in prayer through this time. We love and appreciate you all.

Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanuatu, Seth and Nicole Stokes.