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—From
Jim Au, IMM Founder & President News
at last! This has been a busy year for me in more
ways than I planned for. It starts with where I
left off in the previous newsletter, namely my
health.
On November
17, 2003, I came down with an unexplained nerve
condition that severely limited my physical
function and kept me in a state of constant pain
for weeks. The effect was most pronounced in my
left arm. I started seeing my chiropractor
regularly, and the pain gradually subsided. In
January, an ice storm prevented me from going to
any appointments for a several weeks. During the
storm, my condition appeared to cease altogether.
I was glad for that relief, but I continued to
struggle with acute neck and back problems not
apparently related to the nerve condition.
In March, I
began a web project with River of Life Ministries
of Fairview, Oregon. The man I was working with,
Pat Buckley, came to my home several times to
discuss details of the project and pray together.
On the second visit, he learned of my physical
struggle and prayed for me with great zeal.
Within one day, the pain stopped. Since then, my
neck and back problems have not recurred at all.
The Lord healed me. Praise the Lord!
In June,
exactly one day before I was to go see our web
project presented at a local church, the nerve
condition came back exactly the same way as I
experienced last November. It started as a
strange tingling in my elbow, and then the pain
became excruciating. Pain medication I had taken
before seemed utterly useless.
As I went to
see my project on display, the pain was terrible,
but I was still able to drive safely. I wanted to
see Pat Buckley again in addition to the
evangelist about whom we made the presentation.
Both men prayed fervently over me before and
after the meeting. Strangely, my pain did not go
away. This seemed ironic, because the
evening’s presentation was all about
evangelist’s crusade in Pakistan, where many
hundreds experienced miraculous healings just
weeks before my pain’s onset.
That was a
Friday evening. After the long weekend that
followed, I made a firm decision. This time, I
wanted God to receive all the glory for whatever
happened in my body. If there was something
spiritual preventing me from receiving healing,
then I would deal with that as the Lord showed me.
Otherwise, I decided not to see any doctors, nor
allow the pain to put me to bed again for another
two months. As Pat Buckley had showed me that
very evening, it was only pain, and it
didn’t stop me from pumping out ten push-ups
for him on the church floor!
In the weeks that followed, the pain came and
went and came again. I prayed according to a
pattern that Pat taught me, similar to what I
have heard my missionary friend Glenn Cunningham
pray. I also did push-ups. Many times, I would
experience immediate relief, but inevitably pain
would return in some measure. Eventually, this
condition subsided. As of this writing, pain in
my arm and upper shoulder has almost completely
vanished. I still carry the last remnant of this
condition, which is numbness in my left hand
thumb and index finger. This doesn’t keep me
from doing anything, although it seems I drop
nails and screws a lot while doing home
improvement work.
It isn’t
over yet, but I feel I have greatly benefited
from this roller coaster experience. When
excruciating pain returned to by body last June,
I purposed in my heart for God to triumph and for
the enemy to be trumped. I believe this has
happened. For one, I feel the Lord has drawn me
closer to Him in a difficult time. Instead of
falling into discouragement, I have been able to
“be there” for my family, my church
fellowship, the ministry and many others. I was
able one day to help Scott Powell (who inspired
me for this ministry) move all his furniture into
a second story apartment, up several narrow
flights of stairs! I have taken every opportunity
to physically pick up and carry our children;
before August, I was too fearful that by doing
this I would aggravate my condition. As James the
Apostle wrote, “My brethren, take the
prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as
an example of suffering and patience. Indeed we
count them blessed who endure. You have heard of
the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended
by the Lord--that the Lord is very compassionate
and merciful” (James 5:10-11). And I also
read Job a lot!
Progress
Report
Here is a summary of what I was able, with the
Lord’s encouragement and strength, to
accomplish for Impact Media Ministries from
February 2004 to the present.
1. A website
for Indian evangelist Rev. Glenn Cunningham was
launched; work is still in progress. Glenn’s
visit to the USA this month may help me to finish
the initial release.
2. You can view my original three-minute Flash
presentation about evangelist Hamilton Filmalter
(Oregon-resident, native of South Africa) and his
April crusades in Pakistan, which reached over 60,000
attendees, at http://www.spiritone.com/~imm/hfm/hfm-1.htm
(dial-up and broadband speeds). Hamilton’s
website has a modi-fied version at http://healingwells.com/pakistan_5.htm.
3. The
promotional DVD for the House of Myrrh Ministries
is my first published work ever. As of this
writing, a bulk quantity of DVDs is being
manufactured by Disc Makers, for mass
distribution by this Portland-area ministry with
a wide reach in the Western USA. The DVD features
an eleven-minute introductory video, a much
updated version of the one I produced last year
for their support-raising banquet. It also
includes forty minutes of testimonies and dozens
of informational slides. I have been personally
blessed so much through the House of Myrrh. For
more information about their workshops, see http://heartchange.org.
4. In March,
I was on location videotaping House of Myrrh
Ministries’ four-day HeartChange workshop. I
am now well over ninety percent of the way
through post-production to provide the ministry
with a multi-DVD recording of the event, which
they will use to train future facilitators of
this dynamic, life-transforming workshop. The
interactive DVD format allows the viewer to find
and watch any of nearly one hundred video
segments, comprising more than twenty hours of
viewing. This is the first project I have done
where video was recorded directly to computer
hard drives instead of videotape. In fact, I did
not have any videotape on hand during the event.
The nearly forty hours of live recording consumed
the better part of five hundred gigabytes of hard
drive storage. Two of House of Myrrh’s staff
helped me to operate video cameras during this
two-camera recording.
5. I assisted
evangelists Ron and Karen Rohman to secure a new
free website for their ministry. This couple has
been a great inspiration to me in their
sacrificial work to reach out to people in
Portland’s busiest downtown sector, as
chronicled at http://awakening1s.net. They tell
many touching stories of their encounters with
people in the streets, not all who are homeless.
By the way, ad-free websites are available to
churches and ministries from http://www.churchquest.com,
provided that viewer traffic doesn’t become
so enormous as to warrant a paid plan.
Year-End
Plans and Beyond
I have one more project I intend to pursue this
calendar year. That is the Thank-You Power video,
which I agreed to record and post on the Internet
for speaker Duane Fugitt. I was just about to
start this one year ago, when my nerve condition
struck unexpectedly.
Election Year
Unlike any other year before this one, I have
been closely following news surrounding our
upcoming elections in November. While writing
this newsletter, I received a call from Rev.
Glenn Cunningham who is here in the USA on his
fourth visit. He shared a Scripture, which shed
an interesting light on this time. Proverbs 24:24-25:
“He who says to the wicked, ‘You are
righteous,’ him the people will curse;
nations will abhor him. But those who rebuke the
wicked will have delight, and a good blessing
will come upon them.” Please be in prayer
for our nation, that God’s righteousness
would be restored in measure equal to
America’s calling, that of being a light to
the world for Him.
Personal and Family News
In February, I resigned as chairman of the Board
of Directors of House of Myrrh Ministries prior
to taking on project #4 mentioned above. A very
capable director, Steve Paysinger, with whom I
attended one of the HeartChange workshops in 2003,
filled my seat. He is a featured speaker in their
promotional DVD (project #3).
Last December,
I found that ice-skating gave me a terrific
workout and helped to greatly relieve my nerve
pain. I signed up for a skating endurance class
and thoroughly enjoyed the weekly workout. One
highlight was skating on the same ice as
Oregon’s state figure skating champion,
Rachel Rizzo, age 12 (now 13); I’m
predicting she will make the Olympics one day. On
the last day of the class, while skating
backwards on speed skates, I fell hard on my
right shoulder, injuring it again from a 1999
trampoline accident. This injury is the neck and
back pain I referred to earlier, which the Lord
healed through Pat Buckley’s prayer of faith.
For months, I
was unable to skate. Recovery was slow, but by
July, I had the privilege of attending a speed
skating camp led by two former Olympians, Nick
Thometz and Becky Sundstrom. They moved from
Illinois, one of the speed skating capitals of
the USA, to make their home in Vancouver, WA,
just across the Columbia River from Portland. It
was thrilling to train on indoor ice for nearly
six hours while the outdoor temperature soared to
105oF.
Trudy and I
made a decision this year to put our three girls
into public school. They are attending Emerson
charter school, which has fairly small class
sizes. Something I like about the teaching staff
is their good communication to parents through
handouts, e-mails and conversation in the
classroom when we’re dropping off the girls.
The girls are enjoying their new school. Daniel
seems to enjoy being the only child at home while
school is in session, although he does often ask
where his sisters are.
Prayer
requests
1. For Trudy, as she has been experiencing a lot
of pain and down time due to fibromyalgia and
arthritic symptoms.
2. That she and I would get our fitness act
together, which would provide a huge benefit to
both of us.
3. For God’s righteousness to be restored to
our nation.
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