Hello everyone,

I am sorry for my long silence, but things just got too intense in my life and keeping up the blog — actually keeping up with reading blogs, had to go on the back burner for awhile.

To give you all a brief recap of my past couple of months, my dad went back into the hospital worse than before. It had only been a couple of weeks since he had over two liters of fluid removed from his right lung, and he was now back with more than ever. They took him to surgery, removed almost four liters, and did a procedure to prevent further build up. He had to stay in bed for weeks with a drainage tube, and go through a seemingly endless array of tests and procedure from cardiac, pulmonary, and auto-immune specialists — and in the end still did not know the cause of these three episodes.

Three weeks into his stay, my wife’s grandmother had a severe stroke and passed away. My wife and her family had to go to Arkansas for the funeral without me, because I didn’t want to leave my dad. Five days later my grandmother died. This was my father’s mother, and we worried about telling him and how it might affect his own recovery. She had a close call weeks before, and bounced back from multiple system failures — but she went to a nursing facility to recover, got another strain of flu, and it was all too much to fight. Everyone in our family knew that she was sick again and that things weren’t going well, but we chose to not tell my dad since it could only hinder his own improvement.

My dad has been in KUMed’s cardiology wing for all three episodes (since it started with fluid on the heart), and they have been amazing every time. When they heard about my father’s mom passing they took it to a new level — rallying together to get my father to a level of wellness, so that he could leave the hospital to attend his mother’s service. Their efforts gave my dad an infusion of hope too, and my dad not only got well enough to leave — he didn’t have to go back.

Now, six weeks later my dad has lost almost 50 pounds and is being tapered off steroids. Prayers for continued healing would be great appreciated.

The week of my grandmother’s funeral I got a call that the new center for innovative ministry and Master of Pastoral Leadership in a Community Context had been approved by the University. Since then I have come back on staff to be a part of this great new ministry to pastors. We will offer library and database access to every pastor on our region (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota), increase our on-campus Ministry Resource Intensives, and offer global experiences through educational travel and service. The newest facet of service will be a growing list of faculty and pastors who have offered to go to the districts that may not be able to come to the University for educational events, and provide weekend seminars. All the hosts need to cover is transportation and lodging.

Besides getting things rolling, I have had to do quite a bit print design and work on building a website. In all of this, and finishing up my semester of classes I have really let the blog go, but now I am back and committed to getting back to posting — hopefully daily.

I hope that some of you have continued to check back once in awhile, and are still around to begin this journey of conversation with me again.

Peace.

Hello all, 

I am sorry for the silence this weekend.  It started out as my wife & I celebrating Valentine’s Day a day late, and has ended with the rarity of me getting sick.  So far it is just an achy fly, and I hope it stays here.  

It truly is a rare event that I get sick like this when I just stay in, but it has happened and the only thing I have wanted to do with my brain is contemplate my aches & watch television. 

The highlight of my day has been a dark chocolate & banana milkshake.  They even made the flavors as two separate shakes & then poured them into the glass side-by-side.  It was a nice treat and it helped my throat too.

Anyway, I did not intend to bore you with my day, but to tell you that I have a few posts that I hope to get out tomorrow.  If I am not feeling up to it again then I will have to get another shake, and tell you all about it.

Peace.