I took Jesus to the doctor yesterday to see about his jaw. For those of you who don’t know, he has a lump on his jaw that seemed to be getting bigger and bigger…and more painful. After a borage of tests and whatnot, we finally saw a specialist. It was kind of entertaining…this doctor is a teaching doctor and we saw him in his classroom. So poor Jesus had to sit there as a classroom of medical wannabe’s poked and prodded his cheek. In the end it was determined that he has an abscess that needed to be drained. The grumpier news was that the doctor was of the opinion that the abscess might be a result of tuberculosis.

If true (and we’re getting him tested now) that would be the second case of TB in the house (Franz was diagnosed in July while I was gone). Obviously, this would not be good news. As a precaution, we’ve moved David out of the room he shares with Jesus and Franz. Just the night before, I was getting after the guys for not being careful enough with this. Franz has special plates and silverware that are just for his use, but we noticed that night, that he wasn’t using them. When I got grumpy about that, the guys kind of thought it was a bit of a joke and that I was overreacting. It’s not that I don’t appreciate being vindicated and able to say “I told you so!”, but it’s at a bit of a cost. I would rather be wrong about this one. So hopefully, we’ll find that Jesus’ tests come back negative.

In the realm of medical news, my neck seems to be healing fine. It doesn’t hurt all that often…just if I’m doing a lot and not giving it much of a break. I’m still getting headaches and it seems to creak and crack a little more often than before…but that could just be old age and not getting enough sleep…

A couple of other prayer requests…I was pretty angry with one of the guys last night. I won’t go into details (and it’ll be fine in the end…it was just a bad judgement call on his part), but today we have to work through it and come up with a reasonable punishment. As well, a couple of the guys are still working through various personal issues, and wisdom and patience for them would be a good thing.

As I write this, the girls from Saskatoon that were visiting here and helping out this past month, should be arriving home in about half an hour. Please pray for them as they adjust to being back in Canada. They’ve both got busy schedules to jump into as soon as they get back, and sometimes it takes a bit of time to adjust and re-engage North American culture. A sad note to their time here was that they were robbed one night just outside of my friend Corina’s ministry, El Jordan. That’s a tough thing to work through as well, so pray for healing and wisdom as they deal with that. They were a great help here, and a lot of fun. No doubt the guys will miss their crazy Canadian antics…

That about covers it these days. We’re working at getting everyone into their various classes and working out their schedules. Once again I’m very thankful to Isabel for handling most of that. I tend to get kind of confused when it comes to what they need to do in order to get enrolled. The system here differs a lot from Canada, so it’s a bit overwhelming some days. Isabel knows pretty much everyone in the city =) so she handles it well. I just have to randomly say, “So I was thinking about this…” and two days later she’s like, “Okay, I know this guys and I so I called him and he can help you out with that…” For all those of you who’ve prayed for many years that God would provide an administrative person for me…you have no idea… =)

As a side note, both Franz and Sandro passed their entrance exams for the school they want to study in. That was a bit of a surprise and probably should be entered into the “somewhat miraculous” category. Not so much for Sandro…he was mostly ready. But Franz was completely unprepared and no one (including him) knows how this happened. But who are we to question….

Thanks for praying everyone and for faithfully checking out the blog even when I haven’t been posting that regularly for awhile. I appreciate that!

Talk to you again very soon!

Ken

Oh yea…my piece of randomness for the day. I was thinking last night as I sat at an intersection waiting for the light to change, that some of our street entertainers need to rethink their strategy. It’s warming up here (we’re coming into spring) which means more street performers. They’re kind of gypsy/hippy-ish kind of people and I think they travel around and support themselves by providing various forms of entertainment at major intersections throughout the city.

As I sat there and pondered this…my thought last night was this… If someone can lessen my boredom for 60 seconds as I wait for the light to change…that’s great. I’ll pay you the normal 20 cents or so, that’s customary. So juggling guys on stilts and the flaming torch juggling guy…you’re all good. No problem. But flag waving girl…sorry, it’s just not doing it for me. I’m not against flag waving in general if it’s done well. But this girl just stood there and “artistically” waved her flag in a circle for the whole time and then seemed offended when no one gave her anything. Across the street a guy was sitting on another guy’s shoulders and juggling daggers. Come on…now that’s entertainment.

So flag waving girl…either light your flags on fire or come up with something a little more engaging….until then, flaming dagger stilts guy gets my money.