November 12th, 2025
by Brad Banks
by Brad Banks
Dear Trinity family,
Greetings from New Hampshire! Nathanael and I returned last night. Bree will be back the day after tomorrow after she spends a couple of days with a friend from college in Boston.
I wanted to remind everyone quickly about our events with our missionaries the Salzmans this weekend. There is a dinner on Friday night @ the Monroes from 6:00-9:00PM as well as a potluck after worship this Sunday. This is a chance to connect, an opportunity to learn more about what is happening in their ministry, and also to encourage their hearts with your presence. You can sign up for both events in the TBC app.
Thank you for your prayers over our travel and Bree's appointment with MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. We didn't experience any meaningful delays or issues and the clearest way I can communicate what we learned from her visit was that we left with hope.
Stage 4 cancer isn't something you cure; it's something you control for as long as you can. That was starting to feel like going to Mars. Theoretically you understand how it works and that it can happen but whether or not it will work is highly questionable. Now that feels more like going to the moon. Yes it's complicated. It will involve a commitment, but it's been done before and it's reasonable to think it can be done again.
Her next steps are to stay on her current medication as long as she can. You don't change unless the med stops working and her scan last week showed it's working. Things aren't smaller but they are stable. We'll take stable.
She will be scanned again in February and if it isn't working anymore (i.e. the cancer is growing), we will make a decision on a clinical trial either at DH, Dana Farber, or MD Anderson, depending on what's available.
If you'd like to pray specifically, please pray that trials will be available then and that medications that are trials now will be available as new, approved treatments when she needs it. Please pray, as I do, that this will be the case for each of our stage 4 folks - Bob Hoefer, Bree, and Karen Bucur.
God bless, and I so look forward to seeing everyone on Sunday when we'll be looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in Discipleship 101, the practice of family worship in our "First Mission Field - the family" class, and the end of the Samson story in Judges 16 in worship.
In Christ
Pastor Brad
Greetings from New Hampshire! Nathanael and I returned last night. Bree will be back the day after tomorrow after she spends a couple of days with a friend from college in Boston.
I wanted to remind everyone quickly about our events with our missionaries the Salzmans this weekend. There is a dinner on Friday night @ the Monroes from 6:00-9:00PM as well as a potluck after worship this Sunday. This is a chance to connect, an opportunity to learn more about what is happening in their ministry, and also to encourage their hearts with your presence. You can sign up for both events in the TBC app.
Thank you for your prayers over our travel and Bree's appointment with MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. We didn't experience any meaningful delays or issues and the clearest way I can communicate what we learned from her visit was that we left with hope.
Stage 4 cancer isn't something you cure; it's something you control for as long as you can. That was starting to feel like going to Mars. Theoretically you understand how it works and that it can happen but whether or not it will work is highly questionable. Now that feels more like going to the moon. Yes it's complicated. It will involve a commitment, but it's been done before and it's reasonable to think it can be done again.
Her next steps are to stay on her current medication as long as she can. You don't change unless the med stops working and her scan last week showed it's working. Things aren't smaller but they are stable. We'll take stable.
She will be scanned again in February and if it isn't working anymore (i.e. the cancer is growing), we will make a decision on a clinical trial either at DH, Dana Farber, or MD Anderson, depending on what's available.
If you'd like to pray specifically, please pray that trials will be available then and that medications that are trials now will be available as new, approved treatments when she needs it. Please pray, as I do, that this will be the case for each of our stage 4 folks - Bob Hoefer, Bree, and Karen Bucur.
God bless, and I so look forward to seeing everyone on Sunday when we'll be looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in Discipleship 101, the practice of family worship in our "First Mission Field - the family" class, and the end of the Samson story in Judges 16 in worship.
In Christ
Pastor Brad
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