Since my previous posting was quite depressing and negative I felt it necessary to write again today to let you know that the many prayers sent up for me have been felt in an amazing way!  Two days ago I felt in almost utter despair and now, just a day and a half later, I feel completely different.  So many people and churches have lifted me and my family up in prayer and I want you all to know that I have felt the power of these answered prayers!  God has given me a renewal in my spirit today that could not have come in any other way but through Him.  Many have said that when satan knows you are allowing yourself to be used by God in a powerful way that he will fight you with everything he's got.  Today satan lost!  I know that he won't be gone forever, but he was gone from me today and I give the praise to God and thank the many people who have been praying for me.  I'll keep this short because I want to share with you part of my devotional from yesterday in "Streams in the Desert".  For those not familiar with it, it is a devotional written in 1925 with excerpts from numerous people's writings.  Yesterday's writing, although added to the book ninety years ago, and written by Louis Albert Banks, seemed like it was there for me.  I think I could have read this any other time and it would not have meant as much to me as it did yesterday...here it is.

     "A man who once wrote about the salvaging of old ships stated that it was not the age of the wood from the vessel alone that improved its quality.  The straining and the twisting of the ship by the sea, the chemical reaction produced by the bilge water, and the differing cargoes also had an effect.
     Several years ago some boards and veneers cut from an oak beam from an eighty-year-old ship were exhibited at a fashionable furniture store on Broadway in New York City.  They attracted attention, because of their elegant coloring and beautiful grain.  Equally striking were some mahogany beams taken from a ship that sailed the seas sixty years ago.  The years of travel had constricted the pores of the wood and deepened its colors, so that they were as magnificent and bright as those on an antique Chinese vase.  The wood has since been used to make a cabinet that sits in a place of honor in the living room of a wealthy New York family.
     There is also a great difference between the quality of elderly people who have lived listless, self-indulgent, and useless lives and the quality of those who have sailed through rough seas, carrying cargo and burdens as servants of God, and as helpers of others.  In the latter group, not only has the stress and strain of life seeped into their lives but the aroma of the sweetness of their cargo has also been absorbed into the very pores of each fiber of their character."