Lidya: My husband and I have been married for 15 years. We have seven kids with one on the way from China. We have been homeschooling for eight years. My kids' age range is from one all the way up to 13. So we do a lot of different studies for different ages. It's really exciting to know that I'm the one that has been instrumental in teaching them and leading them through their different milestones.
Panumus: About four years after we were married, I went through a job change and my job didn't offer any type of health benefit. My mother and father in law told us about Medi-Share.
Lidya: When we joined Medi-Share we had three healthy children and we were expecting to have more and we did. We had two more healthy children. So we had five. When we had our sixth child, she was born with spina bifida, that was a big surprise.
Panumus: A lot of people find out after the 20-week ultrasound and for us it didn't show up in the ultrasound. So as far as we knew, we were going to have a healthy baby. There's multiple levels of spina bifida, but basically it's a hole in the spine where the spinal cord comes out. So we had very lengthy process, surgeries, neurosurgeons, all that that took place. It was intense, I have to say, but for my wife and I think for us, we believe God is sovereign.
Lidya: For me. I would say it greatly affected my spiritual journey because I could really feel God's comfort and His peace in my heart with the whole situation. I felt like God just really provided for me emotionally and spiritually.
Panumus: When my daughter was diagnosed with spina bifida, there's just so many things that we needed.
Lidya: We weren't anticipating her to be coming with this extra need, but we are so thankful that we had already become part of the Medi-Share community. So we had the help and support.
Panumus: It was a very significant bill, about a quarter of a million dollars. The members there shared all of that, so it has been very amazing.
Lidya: Medi-Share was instrumental in recommending therapies and getting involved through prayer and encouragement.
Panumus: We love Medi-Share. We've been members now going on, I think almost seven, eight years. It's been fantastic with seven children and my wife and I we've had actual several opportunities to use it, to have members really bless us. My wife broke her leg about 10 months ago, the members shared that and then my daughter, she actually broke her ankle.
As a business owner, looking at different health options. I've encouraged almost all my staff to be on Medi-Share and I'd probably say 80% of my staff is on Medi-Share. We just really agree with what Medi-Share stands for, especially about believers, sharing each other's burdens. That's really key for us because as believers, we should be able to come alongside each other. But with our adoption, it's nice to find out that our Medi-Share members are able to share in our needs with the adoption. So that's something that's very exciting for us to know that, that they can do that and that's available to us.
My hope and my dream for all of my kids that, if anything that they do is that when they leave here, they just love the Lord and that they will just tell the world about him and not be ashamed.
