Ruth Update, February 3, 2008

Dear Friends, Relatives, and Prayer Partners,

There is really no news. My PET/CT scan is scheduled for Saturday, February 9th, at 10:15 AM. Paul is going to take me to it this time. You see, one of the things with a PET scan, is you lie on the skinny cot with your hands over your head for the duration of the scan, which is, I suppose, about 20 minutes. No big deal, except that my shoulders are where I have been having pain. Even though this is a fasting test, I will be allowed to take some pain medication. I am going to see if two Vicodin do the trick, so I will not be able to drive afterwards.

The last two weeks, I have come home on Friday and almost immediately put on my jammies and crawled into bed. I have been so tired and achy that I just couldn't face the afternoon vertical. Last Friday, I did put some chicken leg quarters in the crockpot before I left for work, so Paul didn't have to start dinner from scratch. Then, I told him what I had in mind, and we had chicken taco soup for dinner. I was inspired by the bag of tortilla chip crumbles we had. They went great in the soup, and I may have proved to Paul that one really can wing it occasionally. He is really big into following the recipe exactly.

We enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year a little early with the members of our church who worship in Mandarin. We had a special guest for the weekend, Dr. Rowold, a professor from the seminary who also spent twenty years as a missionary in Taiwan, and some more time in Hong Kong. He still visits Asia with the mission board of our church from time to time. He spoke in English on the state of the Christian Church in China on Saturday morning, and on the Old Testament in Mandarin in the afternoon. Between times, some of us in the Board of Elders took him off to lunch to pick his brains to get some advice about our Mandarin ministry. In the evening, he was the guest speaker at a banquet. He spoke in Mandarin, but we heard a synopsis in English. It was a story about how when he was in Taiwan, the wine was really bad. I assume he was talking about wine for communion. Anyway, he decided to make his own. Part of the process is that you have to let the gasses from fermentation escape without letting outside air into the container. They used a curved tube with a bit of water in the curve so that outside air could not get in, and whenever the pressure got so great inside the fermentation vessel, they would hear a little "boop!" as the gas escaped. No matter the pressure outside, the gas escaped with that little "boop!" (I was surely glad to get the translation, because I was wondering what all the "Boop, boop, boop!" was about!) Dr. Rowold used this as an illustration of the Christian Church during the dark days of the cultural revolution. No matter the pressure from the outside, the Word of God and the Christian Church continued to grow, or "ferment" and little "Boops" of life kept percolating to the surface. Now, the Christian church is growing at the rate of three congregations every two days in China!

The food was very good, too. I even managed to not take seconds even though my taste buds wanted more, more, more! My tummy had other ideas.

I may never need to buy pantyhose again. Giant, one of our local supermarket chains, is discontinuing my favorite brand of panty hose and selling it for half-price. I have cleaned three stores out of my size. Except for the off-white. I cannot picture myself in off-white hose. Our local Safeway quit carrying pantyhose that fit me a long time ago, but I don't remember them selling off their inventory. Giant must be going through some kind of reorganization, because there are many products being discontinued.

Get your mammograms. Do your self-exams.

Love,

Ruth
http://ruthsmusings.blogspot.com