Myrna Sofia

Our stay revolved around celebrating Christmas in St Nickolaus Kirche and later at the Dom. In between we gathered around our 'tree' for family photo and gifts, and otherwise spun around Myrna for pictures, footprint making, and to pick up on all her cute 'cues'.

Christmas in Cologne

We are spending the Christmas season in Germany, thanks to the new (and early) arrival of Myrna Sofia.  She is doing a great job breaking in new parents, Kelly and Chris; and she has pretty well captured our whole-hearted attention also.  

As you can see the weather report does not include a white Christmas, but that doesn't stop all the outdoor Christmas Markts that include wonderful food and warm wine drinks (gluwein).

Camp Malibu

This trip was the first week of July, and was a 'working vacation' with an opportunity to care for 320+ high school campers and a volunteer workforce of over 100.  Thankfully I filled in with another doctor and his family, and we saw lots of minor injuries and illness, but had no campers that needed airlifting out.  Not that there weren't lots of risk-taking activities, and a three ring circus of fun-filled options.  But the real focus was a wonderful program and talks that shared faith and real life issues.  We experienced a wonderful community in the midst of spectacular scenery.... heaven anyone?

Salt Lake Heart-to-Heart

"A window of opportunity won't open itself."

Somehow dad made the most of a break in his own cancer treatment, and the improvement in how he felt to arrange tickets to fly to Salt Lake City with mom to visit David and Mary Ann. It was next to impossible for travel to occur the other way around.
But the window seemed to close, when dad had a hospitalization 12 days before the trip was scheduled. And David landed back in his hospital the week before. Still dad recovered, and was cleared to go just days ahead. And David was stabilized, albeit now closer than ever to be short-listed for a heart transplant. He was eager for the visit.
My role was to fly from Seattle, meet mom and dad in SLC and provide chauffeuring, facilitating, and hopefully no medical back-up. I was a bit cautious(skeptical) that this window would stay open long and wide enough over a weekend, to allow for lots of quality time.
So what happened? We had a great visit. Words were said and quality time was spent... somehow face-to-face time is even better than a phone call. Mom and Dad were inspirational just in their presence. David was inspired to share more hope and feelings and a plan for the rest of his life. Faith came up often. Life is seen with a much clearer focus when a life threatening illness is sitting in the same room. And we had at least two of these deadly 'elephants' in the room. They stayed at bay.

New Album 4/20/08 5:17 PM

Bob and Jamie's Wedding

We traveled to San Diego to celebrate a wedding, and it turned out that our Seattle-to-SD flight was a short hop compared to other long distance travelers.  Bob, as groom, came from his base in Japan, along with his bride Jamie.  My sister Laura (Bob's mother) flew in from Maine, along with dad Kent, who also served as the officiant at the wedding.

Many other members of Jamie's extended family came from her home in Florida, and others from Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas.

But the long distance awards went to my sister Lynn and her husband Rick, along with Bob's sister Sarah.... all who managed to come from New Zealand, via Germany.  That doesn't seem like the most direct route, but it worked for them.

Fortunately, my parents and Jamie's 'adopted parents' (John and Terry) have homes here.  We had the rehearsal dinner at the latter, and a Sunday breakfast for family at my parents.

The wedding itself was an out-door affair... picture perfect, albeit cool.  The reception warmed us all with good food and lively dancing.   

Vietnam mission

This was a trip to a unique and exotic culture. It was a trip backwards in history for me to find a new vision of Vietnam to overlay the experience of the Vietnam War years (they call it the American War).

It was primarily a field course for Barbara as co-leader of 10 nursing students from SPU. They did pediatric and community health training in a duel learning and outreach effort.

And then there were the collaborative interactions with the Vietnamese doctors that proved to be equal amounts of giving and of receiving knowledge and support. One more layer of training extended to having VN nursing students accompany us to the mountain villages.

For me, I had a separate opportunity to do two 2 hour classes a day for 24 total VN doctors. My given job was to go over medical terminology in terms of pronunciation. But as the course evolved it became one part rote repetition, and two parts teaching word entomology and applying the understanding to each of their specialties via case presentations. I came to a much deeper understanding of their medical culture, and hopefully they came to know me and know better the basis of words, not just their rote usage.

Finally there was the experience of a total retreat of 5 weeks with one group of people that became more than I expected. We told our stories, we related over patients, over meals, in one-on-one conversations, in times of need. We played games, we worked hard, we shared goals.

And then it was over. I can only trust some whisper of hope and some small breeze of our faith was felt by those we encountered. I know I ended up both drained with the length of intense time spent, and also sad that once we left this 'community', this 'family' we had created would be gone also.

It was a trip I put a lot into, got more out of,... and can't make again.