Even keels

     It's been good to be back with Kari again.  She is coming out of a very hard period of pain and nausea.  We hope in the next couple of days that her body will make adjustments to the powerful antibiotics that contribute much to her stomach pain, but which are needed to combat an intestinal infection.  And we now know that much of her shoulder pain and headaches are due to very tense muscles.  "The muscle up the back of my neck feels as hard as a rock," she says, and it is--though because of the collar she wears, it's hard to get back there and massage it much.  We try, though, and she seems better able to sense when her muscles are tense and she needs to try to relax.  Trying to relax is on her mind a lot, which is good, but ironic too: trying hard to relax is a paradox.  When she was being suctioned just a few minutes ago and her arms were jerking upwards, she said to me a couple of times, "I'm trying hard to relax, I'm trying hard."  It's working too.  Her arms don't jerk up nearly so hard as they used to, and it's easier to bring them down afterwards.

     Talking with Aaron over the last couple of days, I think he's just hoping to establish an even keel for himself and Kari and everyone, so that we all don't get too excited when good things happen, and we don't get too down when bad things do.  The good and bad are all part of the process.  Since we were speaking of the Cubs a few days ago, I thought of the Bulls.  When Phil Jackson took over he said that his greatest concern was that the team got too high when it won and got too low when it didn't.  They had to establish a more even keel and not rock back and forth so much.  Don't get so excited about winning or losing: that sounds like a formula for mediocrity, but, as we know, it led to a great dynasty.  Not getting too excited about "winning" might seem like we're not thankful enough to God, but that's not it either.  It's hard to explain, and what comes to mind immediately is another sports analogy.  When asked about what he thought about football players celebrating so outrageously when they scored a touchdown, one coach said he'd rather have a more muted celebration: you know, as if the player had been there before!

     I think of God not only promising us victory, but of that victory already being won.  We've been in that endzone over and over before.  We can focus on the here and now and go through whatever it is, good or bad, because we know we have already won.  Not rocking back and forth between highs and lows is, then, an expression of serenity and confidence.  We'll be OK, no matter what it looks like now.  Pray for us with this confidence and serenity.

 

--Richard R. Guzman         

    

Ethiopia Trip Happenings (From Brett Noble)

The Ethiopia trip is over and team has been back home for about a week now.  I’d like to share with you all some of the highlights.  Let me start by quoting from an e-mail that Pastor Rick sent to the team a few days before the trip: “Pray for protection, for God's direction and guidance, for Divine appointments each place we go, for the church in Dangla and throughout Ethiopia. Please continue to pray for Kari and Aaron each day.”  My friends, God has answered those prayers and many others.
 
None of us were seriously sick, wounded, damaged, lost, shot at, arrested, trampled by hippos, or otherwise incapacitated during the entire trip.  I’m pretty sure that was a miracle.  We had a mission to accomplish, and by God’s grace we were able to see it through.
 
Many things did not go as planned.  Big surprise.  But it was clear that God’s hand was guiding us every day.  Did someone mention Divine appointments?  On Friday the 12th, we were supposed to be in Addis but ended up in Bahar Dar because of a plane ticket mix up.  We took the extra day to travel to an island in the middle of lake Tana to tour a couple of old monasteries, which turned into an opportunity to share the gospel with some of the priests there.  By the testimonies of some of our team and the help of our Ethiopian brothers, several of them received God’s gift of salvation!
 
Kari mentioned to me that she woke up during the night Thursday and felt compelled to pray for us.  With the ten hour time difference, we figured this would have been the very time that our team was talking with the priests, as close as we can tell.  Our team talked on a number of occasions about God using Aaron and Kari as part of the team even though they were not physically present with us, and I believe this is a specific example of how God used them to minister along side us, as part of our team.
 
Our teacher training was an overwhelming success, thanks to five of our team who poured themselves into it.  I believe we’ve been invited back every year to repeat the star performance!
 
We did a whirlwind of work with the Ethiopia Eden project so I won’t try to get into all of those details except to say that it was fun, we truly seemed to provide real help in many ways, and God blessed all that we did.
 
As some of you know, one evening while our team was praying for Aaron and Kari, I received a specific call from God to go to Denver and to pray over Kari for healing, which my wife Shary and I did this last weekend.  Aaron mentioned this in a previous post and described it well – we don’t quite know what happened.  It wasn’t clear what God did or what He will do in Kari’s body.  Yes, I am disappointed that Kari was not healed immediately.  But I continue to trust that God sent me to Denver for a reason.  I did my part as best as I understood from God, and I will leave God’s part in God’s hands, where it belongs.
 
Blessings to you all.
 
Brett Noble

Update from Aaron

Hello All--

Kari is still on the up and down with the pain in her stomach and shoulders.  Mostly on the down, though. They found that she has a bacterial infection in her G.I. tract and a staph infection in her lungs.  Those are the main culprits of her stomach pain and the increased fluid in her lungs.  The doctors have also reworked some of her medications because the 8 or so drugs that they were giving her at a time (which all went into her stomach tube) were also contributing to the upset stomach.  In the morning today she had a PET scan (which is similar to a CAT scan) which was a little stressful, but all in all went well.  Her ventilator settings were incorrect for about 10 min, but all her vitals were fine.  They had originally scheduled the scan to try to find the source of her fever, but her temperatures have been basically normal for the last 2-3 days.  Even so, they went ahead with it because it was already on the schedule and with the pain that she's in it might reveal something.  A shoulder specialist came in today to work on her shoulder to and give her PT a little more guidance.  She was good.  You know someone's smart when you really can't understand what they're talking about but they explain it so well that you feel like you do.  Anyways, I guess the good news in all of this is that they seem to be getting to the bottom of all these issues and it looks like we're coming out of what has been a very bad 2 weeks and starting to move forward.

Today is also the second day of classes at Gage.  I want to send out a big thank you to Melissa Wilson, the Elementary band teacher that shares my office and whose students eventually come to me, and also to Kate Hicks who is filling in for me for at least the first few weeks of school.  From what I've heard so far, things are going great, but keep them in your prayers as the beginning of the year is always hectic, especially for a new teacher, or if you're (like Mel is) trying to do your own job while helping someone else.  I guess the best thing I can say about the two of them and the other band directors in Riverside who've been helping is that I'm not worried about school.  ****Quick note to any of my students that are reading this***

U R GONNA GET IT GRANDE STYLE IF U MESS AROUND WHILE I'M GONE, REMEMBER I HAVE SASI, SO I KNOW WHERE U LIVE (in a very deep and evil voice) HA HA HA HA HA HA HA--CUL8R

***Quick not to any teachers, parents, and administrators that are reading this***

THAT WAS JUST A JOKE, I'M ONLY TRYING TO BE FUNNY--YOU CAN'T GET MAD AT A GUY FOR TRYING CAN U??

Okay, well I guess that's all the news--thank you all for the cards, we're starting to get bombarded with them.

Aaron.