Update - June 29

We spent four wonderful days at Blue Haven last week.  We stayed in the cabin pictured above, but spent most of our days at the camp.  We were blessed to be part of rich worship assemblies and once again marveled at the beautiful singing.  We taught classes each day while we were there and enjoyed our interactions with the campers and counselors.  On Tuesday we did a special presentation for the counselors and encouraged them to consider short- or long-term mission work after they graduate from college.  We renewed old friendships and made some great new ones.  

We left Thursday morning for the 12-hour drive back to Austin so that I could be ready for my all-important appointment on Friday morning to get set up for radiation treatments.  We had been out of cell phone range all week, so when we approached Lubbock on Thursday afternoon I checked our voicemail.  James from the Oncology Center had been trying to reach me since Monday.  When I called him back, he informed me that my Friday morning appointment would have to be rescheduled since the CAT scan machine would be out of service beginning Friday morning and would not be up and working again until July 7.  He wanted to schedule me for Thursday afternoon, but since it was 2:30 and we were seven hours away from Austin, that wasn't an option.  I had horrible visions of delaying treatments and our return to Africa for an additional 10 days.  I was especially frustrated that James hadn't tried to try to e-mail me--I had figured that as long as we were getting our e-mails I was in contact with the outside world.  Poor James said he'd talk to the doctor and see what he could do.  He called back a few minutes later assuring me that Dr. Nuesch was insisting that I get the radiation set up and started as soon as possible (bless you, Dr. Nuesch).  The technician from his office agreed to meet me in Round Rock on Friday and use the CAT scan machine there to do the set up.   Whew!  

The appointment on Friday went well.  Now Dr. Nuesch will use the CAT scan to determine the exact radiation plan, and I'll start treatments on Tuesday.  The treatments are supposed to last just a few minutes, and I'll be having one each weekday for the next six and a half weeks.   That will put us at mid-August.  Hopefully I can then rest for a couple of weeks and be ready to head back to Zambia in early September.  

For now we are pretty tied down to Austin.  We are hoping to do some presentations about our Zambian work at area congregations.  If you know of a congregation or group that might be interested in hearing about the work there, please let us know.