Please pray for my friend Jeff

My dear friend and mentor Jeff Jackson is in the hospital and needs your prayers. Pastor Jeff Jackson is founder of the organization I work for, Shepherd's Staff. Jeff is a pastor and mentor to pastors and missionaries around the globe. He's faced more than his share of medical challenges over the past several years. He's been an incredible example of a man of faith during the trials, strain and stress that accompany health problems.

Here's an email that came from our director's office today:

Brothers,

For those of you who haven't heard, Jeff Jackson is back in the hospital. Some of you are aware of what happened last week with the blood clot to one of his kidneys that caused it to become damaged. Apparently, he was ok the latter part of last week but on Saturday the kidney pain hit him again. So he's back in the hospital on pain medication and will have more tests done to try and find out what's causing this. Please continue to pray for him and for Helen.

Jeff shares on his blog what he's been going through.

The CT [scan] showed that a blood clot had somehow clogged one of the main arteries to my left kidney and cut off the blood supply so that 50 percent of the kidney had died! The pain was from the kidney tissue dying, having had it's blood supply cut off abruptly. And, since it had been about 10 hours already, there was no fixing it--I just lost the use of 50 percent of my left kidney.

And apparently, this happening is almost completely unheard of. Blood clots usually go to the lungs, brain, or some other place. Almost never to the kidneys. So, doctors from different specialities started showing up and asking me questions, and all of them said things like, "this is very unusual", "unique", "out of the ordinary", and so forth. [read more...]

Please pray for Jeff.