Three Weeks of Stress

It has been a while since our last post, but once you hear what has been going on, you'll understand.

Three weeks ago, with the approval of our Area President, I went back to the States to attend my son's wedding.

Earlier in the year, my son called to tell me that he had proposed to his long-time girlfriend and that she accepted. I was ecstatic. A few days later we video conferenced to talk about when the wedding would take place. I told him that I wasn't sure I could get permission. I proposed that I video conference in, but he wanted me there in person. When he mentioned that he would be willing to wait for me to return from our mission in April, I could see the look on his fiancée's face. There was great disappointment in her eyes.

Fortunately, and quite surprisingly, I was given permission to go back home for the wedding. It took a lot of planning on my part, because I've always promised my sons that if they ever got married, I'd make the wedding cake. And that I did. For those who are not aware, I used to be a baker a long time ago.

The day after my arrival I was dealing with jet lag and had had only about 4 hours sleep.  Nevertheless, I was under a tight schedule. I spent that day, from 7:30 AM to 10:30 PM, baking cakes and making icing at my sister's place in North Carolina.

My sons.  The one getting married standing next to me.

Most of the next day was spent on the road to the Outer Banks. That evening we had the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Early the next morning, the day of the wedding, I went to the facility where the wedding would be and spent the morning icing and decorating the cakes. I needed to move and assemble the cake in an outdoor tent,  but it was hot and muggy. So I drove to the home of the in-laws, a beautiful beach house, to take a shower and change. I barely had enough time to move the cake and started decorating it with fresh flowers. I positioned the flowers and was getting ready to place the stems around. I looked at my watch and saw that I was 10 minutes late for the wedding.  I  literally threw the stems of leaves on the cake.

Still the wedding was beautiful and the wedding started 15 minutes late. The Lord answered our prayers and just minutes before the outdoor wedding began, the rain stopped.

The reception went very well. It was great to see my family members and to meet many of her family. A few days later I was back on the plane heading home. And it is great being back home again, here in Germany.

Probably due to the stressful schedule I had on that trip and averaging 4-5 hours of sleep each night, I came down with a bad cold a day after returning. Between the visit and the cold, that put me out of work for 2 weeks.

On Tuesday of the next week, I was scheduled to go to Klinikum Darmstadt to have surgery to have some skin cancer cells removed. Now, had I had the squamous cells removed in America, I would have been looking at having everything done in a doctor's clinic and completed in one day.

However, here in Germany, things are done differently. I was originally told that they would make an incision and take some of the cells and the analysis to determine if they got them all would take 24 hours. I would need to stay overnight with an open wound (sealed with some spray on bandage).

It turned out to be longer than that. When they got me onto the operating table, I was then told that it would take two days to analyze the cells. If successful, they would stitch me up, and I would need to stay over one more night. That meant another week of no work for me. Poor Diane has been holding down the fort by herself for three weeks.

During my stay at Klinikum Darstadt.

My ministering fellow senior missionary gave me a priesthood blessing before I left for Klinikum Darmstadt. Between that and prayers from many, I was blessed to have all the squamous cells removed on the first cut, rather than having to stay over the weekend.
This was stressful, but a memorable adventure. I was in a town about 40 some minutes away from my loving wife, staying in a strange facility where almost no one, except for the doctor, spoke English.  Fortunately my German was enough to understand most of what I was told, but it was too difficult for me to communicate back.

Even my roommate, a wonderful man, spoke absolutely no English. He was polite to listened to me struggle to get a conversation going, but I could tell he was grateful that I finally gave up trying.

Now I'm home and things are back to normal. My cold is finally about gone.

Service Project.  This was only one of 3 rooms being used.

Saturday, we even went to the church to help out with a Stake service project. Members and missionaries donated all sorts of clothes, personal care items, and food for the homeless here in Frankfurt. At the church we organized everything for distribution.  We had such a member/missionary turnout, that the 3-hour planned service project only took about 30 minutes.

Still feeling stressed? No. I am back home and ready to get to work with our missionary assignment. More importantly, it is comforting to be back with Diane. When we taught the Dave Ramsey courses, he would encourage people who became debt free to yell out, "We are debt free!"  Well, I'm yelling out, "I AM STRESS FREE!!!"