Dr. Jean-Emile and Sophie Ngué
It’s been two weeks of great fresh French bread from Panera. Add rice, fish, plantain, and spinach and you have a diet familiar enough to Africans. Then, trips to Costco for fancy granola, fruit tarts and other goodies for a brunch type buffet.
The days when Sandy can spend the week cooking are a distant memory. Although it gained an exceptional counselor (in her husband’s unbiased opinion), the world lost a cook. As the apostles said, “It’s not right that we should neglect the word of God to wait on tables” Acts 6.2.
A CD is playing: Sing the Journey 2, by Ken Nafsinger and the Journey Musicians of Eastern Mennonite University. Wistful, jazzy, profound. It’s been repeating all night.
Either that, or a M*A*S*H DVD on tv, volume at 5 or 6, so as not to disturb others. Klinger is on trial for stealing a Polaroid camera.
I believe in the gateway theory of pain: the brain can process only so many stimuli, so keep it busy with relaxing messages and it will not pay so much attention to pain. It works for me. I seldom sleep without something playing through the darkness.
Out the door before 6 a.m., our African guest Dr. Jean-Emile Ngué is spending much of the day in Washington DC, and the evening at Richmond Hill, an urban retreat center here in Richmond. Sandy went on to work, to put a dint in the interminable insurance paperwork that suffocate so many helping professions these days.
Last night we hosted a young couple with two small children. They provided me a delightful break in a pretty tough spate of pain due to atmospheric conditions. It’s been a long time since we child-proofed the house.
The young boy Roger was fascinated with my reacher, the long stick with a grabber on the end people with arthritis use. He used it to pick up tonka trucks, small wood pieces of a puzzle, ray guns, and walking sticks. The latter took a lot of practice.
His younger sister enjoyed our rocking chair. Both played the piano. And I got to be a grandpa type for an hour or so, while parents discussed the African Counseling Center (ACC) with fewer interruptions.
I think we’ll see these young people in Africa in the next several years, perhaps to build the roof of the ACC.
11 p.m. The house once again dark and quiet, I checked the blog. For some reason I looked into the wp 2.5.1 upgrade and believed the offer of a tool that automated the whole process. Sure enough! It worked without a hitch, and I uploaded my favorite family photo, the icon Savior of Zvenigorod.
Henri Nouwen introduced me to it in To Behold the Beauty of the Lord.
I ended yesterday with good French bread, toasted, slathered with I can’t believe it’s not butter.