The Team Takes a Day Off

Last Wednesday I told you a little bit about the team that our nonprofit, Tumaini Volunteers, sent to Kenya. The Anyoraa Community Center they have been working on is coming along, and I hope to show you pictures of the entire project next week, when it is finished (keeping my fingers crossed, as they only have one more full day there).

They did take the day off yesterday to go on safari. I can’t even count the number of pictures they posted in our Google album. Here are just a few random ones.

This beauty, though, gets more than a single shot.

 He was eating a small antelope up in the tree when the team and their guide found him.

 

 And watched him for a long time from the safety of their safari van.

 Just an awesome animal. Beyond words beautiful. 

The team got to eat lunch too.

Back to work, guys. You’ll be heading home soon.  

Nothing More I Can Say

I’ve been reading the book of Jeremiah in my nightly Bible reading. When I came to chapter 25 the other night, the blood in my veins ran cold. Of course, the context of this passage is the prophet Jeremiah trying to save his people from certain destruction. But I think God would say these same things to us. What in the world are we doing to our world and our brothers and sisters, and how can we not expect to incur God’s wrath because of it. (Sorry this is so long; I did cut out a few verses, but it was hard to glean it further.)  

  

4 And though the Lord has sent all his servants the prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or paid any attention. 5 They said, “Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways and your evil practices, and you can stay in the land the Lord gave to you and your ancestors for ever and ever. 6 Do not follow other gods to serve and worship them; do not arouse my anger with what your hands have made. Then I will not harm you.”

7 “But you did not listen to me,” declares the Lord, “and you have aroused my anger with what your hands have made, and you have brought harm to yourselves.”

8 Therefore the Lord Almighty says this: “Because you have not listened to my words, 9 . . . I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an everlasting ruin. 10 I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, the sound of millstones and the light of the lamp. 11 This whole country will become a desolate wasteland.

27 “Then tell them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Drink, get drunk and vomit, and fall to rise no more because of the sword I will send among you.’ 28 But if they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink, tell them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: You must drink it! 29 See, I am beginning to bring disaster on the city that bears my Name, and will you indeed go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, for I am calling down a sword on all who live on the earth, declares the Lord Almighty.’

30 “Now prophesy all these words against them and say to them:

“‘The Lord will roar from on high;

    he will thunder from his holy dwelling

    and roar mightily against his land.

He will shout like those who tread the grapes,

    shout against all who live on the earth.

31 The tumult will resound to the ends of the earth,

    for the Lord will bring charges against the nations;

he will bring judgment on all mankind

    and put the wicked to the sword,’”

declares the Lord.

32 This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“Look! Disaster is spreading

    from nation to nation;

a mighty storm is rising

    from the ends of the earth.”

33 At that time those slain by the Lord will be everywhere—from one end of the earth to the other. They will not be mourned or gathered up or buried, but will be like dung lying on the ground.

34 Weep and wail, you shepherds;

    roll in the dust, you leaders of the flock.

For your time to be slaughtered has come;

    you will fall like the best of the rams.

35 The shepherds will have nowhere to flee,

    the leaders of the flock no place to escape.

36 Hear the cry of the shepherds,

    the wailing of the leaders of the flock,

    for the Lord is destroying their pasture.

37 The peaceful meadows will be laid waste

    because of the fierce anger of the Lord.

38 Like a lion he will leave his lair,

    and their land will become desolate

because of the sword of the oppressor

    and because of the Lord’s fierce anger.

(Various verses from Jeremiah, chapter 25, New International Version)

And there’s nothing more I can say. 

Root-bound

I once again spent way too much time this past work scouring Ancestry.com and putting together my family tree. Those roots seem to go back quite a ways. When I find people who were born in the 1600s, who are allegedly ancestors, a good part of me thinks, “this is all made up. Who kept records back then?” Then I click on the document and a copy of a faded church ledger filled with handwriting no one can decipher shows some names and dates which someone has determined are names of real people and dates they were really born, died or were baptized.

Besides being time-consuming, it is fascinating. We watch TV shows and movies and read books all telling of things that happened hundreds of years ago. It all seems real enough when someone else is giving you their version. But then when you see a name like Hieronymus Paul, born in 1660 in Griesborn, Saarland, Germany, and the computer is telling me this guy is my seventh great-grandfather, how does a person not get kind of excited.

Oh, well, I will keep looking and researching, taking a lot of it with a grain of salt. I’ll also start setting a timer so I get to bed on time.

(Somehow, someone decided that this document witnesses the marriage of Katharina Paul to Johann Wagner. I can make out the name Wagner and month of April, but that’s about it.) 

The Team Arrives in Kenya

I was looking back over my posts the last few months, and I don’t see that I mentioned that our nonprofit organization is taking a team back to Kenya this month. Where have I been???

My son Nick and daughter Val recruited her husband, a girl my kids went to high school with and the girl’s mother. Nick actually had been in Ghana, Africa, with Engineers without Borders since the end of December. 

He was supposed to be helping build a school, but also spent time believing he was Steve Irwin.

He flew from there to Kenya last week. Val, Kaine, Alyssa and Maureen all arrived Monday evening (that’s our time; it was four am in Kenya).

They are there to start the Anyoraa Community Center. I wrote about that when Nick and I returned home last spring. Before they can start the project, however, they are doing some acclimating, apparently. That’s probably a good idea, though, since three of them have never been to Africa before.

I’ll try to share more pictures when I get them from the team. 

What is a Gift Worth?

   As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

Luke 21:1-4 (New International Version)

Since I have been blogging this year about the word “gift”, I had to once again share this story.

When I was in Kenya in 2015, I had the honor of meeting the little girl I sponsor through Compassion. I arrived at her home loaded down with gifts for her and her family. Buying them barely made a dent in my bank account.

She and her mother gave me four eggs, a gourd bowl and a crocheted doily. They gave me so much more than I gave them. They gave everything they had. Their gifts were and still are the most precious possessions in my house (except the eggs, they are long gone, thankfully).

Lord, God, help us to remember which gifts are priceless. Help us to remember the most priceless gift you gave to us – eternal life. Amen.

Flashback Friday - the packet labeled Paul

Most weeks, I don’t know where the time goes, but I at least try to keep track of what day it is. Here it is another Friday morning, and I am totally unprepared to write a blog post. The professionals would probably say that I’m better off not posting anything, than posting something lame and thrown together in five minutes. Yet here I am, bucking the system.

Going through Mom’s old pictures last Sunday, I found a pack labeled “Dad/Paul’. I’d never seen these four pictures before and only one was clearly labeled.

This is my dad’s sister Emmy and her husband Jeff Jeffers. In 1934, age 22, she was diagnosed with heart disease, some type of valve disorder.  At the time, there was nothing that could be done about it.  She and her husband decided that because of that they would not have any children.  They lived for a time in Chicago and Iowa, as well as Tripoli, Wisconsin.  They moved to California in 1954, where she died two weeks later at age 42.  The cause of death was listed as pneumonia, but in the 21st century, the diagnosis probably would have been congestive heart failure, a product of the valve disease. 

The other three pictures, I have no clue. I’ll have to keep studying them. 

Coming to the Clinic – Part 9 – and the winner is . . .

If you read last Wednesday’s blog, you may be wondering which colon screening test I opted to take. My choices were Colonoscopy, Cologuard or FIT. (If you didn’t read last week’s post on this topic, or if you totally forgot what it was about, you might want to revisit it here.)

First, in case you don’t know me, I may not be the poster child for good health and fitness, but I’m only a few pounds overweight, I don’t smoke or drink alcohol, I very rarely eat red meat, I get a reasonable amount of exercise, and I am really working on getting enough sleep. And back to my eating habits? I pretty much consume the Three C’s. Cheerios, chocolate and cookies. I know. My bad.

But with all that in mind, I really am at very low risk for colon cancer. I did have one uncle who was diagnosed with it in his old age, so that’s really all I have going against me. With all that said, hey, folks, I still had my colon screening. So, remember that. No matter how low-risk you are, screenings are important and recommended for a reason.

I did the FIT test last year. Probably the easiest screen to do, but also needs to be repeated every year. This time around, I decided to try the Cologuard. Slightly more complicated to collect, but good for three years.

So, one day, a week before Christmas, my square Cologuard box came via UPS. It sat on the kitchen counter for a few days, amongst the tins of candies and cookies, before I realized that this was not the time of year to deal with this. I put the box in my home office, waiting for the holiday dust to settle. 

Plus, when the Cologuard people called me a few days later to see if my package had arrived and if I had any questions, they reminded me that there was a time element in me getting my specimen to them. Between the weekends and the holidays, there wasn’t a lot of time to get this thing delivered.

Then, New Year’s Day evening, just when I thought that I can deposit my sample in the little plastic container, I was hit with the stomach flu. Seriously? Yes, a couple day of diarrhea and my colon was cleaned out enough that I should have gotten right in for my colonoscopy.  

Instead I waited until the following Monday morning and was able to drop my perfect specimen into the plastic jar. Got it labeled, sealed it up, got it ready to take to town for drop-off on my way to work. In a near blizzard. I really did not want to mess this up, somehow, I would get my Cologuard box off to UPS that day.

I’ll save you from the whole story, because it was rather convoluted (and stressful), but in the end when I finally got the box to the store which sends out UPS in our town, I almost broke down in tears when I saw an identical box on the counter. I pointed it out to the woman working there and said something like, “send mine with that one.” She looked at the two boxes and was like, whatever. I really wanted to set my box down next to the other one (I really wanted to take a picture of them together!), thinking, my poop has a partner to travel to the lab with.

I’m starting to think that I will try the colonoscopy next time just to see if it is that much fun.