Happy Pesach! All Eyes on the MidEast

Busy, busy...

We've been busy. Yesterday, Awanas & the Women's Neighborhood Bible Study finished for this school year. Passover Seder preparation has begun. After work last evening, Louis stayed up until 3:00 a.m., trimming legs of lamb so he could begin koshering the meat for our up-coming seder. I am matzah-balled out from making & freezing all that we will need for the seder; then cooking two more pots of matzah-ball chicken soup. One pot is being eaten by Esther & her apartment mate, Melissa, as they recuperate from the flu. The other was relished at the luncheon following our last I Peter Bible Study.

I accompanied my Mom to St. Patrick Hospital for a cardiac cath a few days ago. Her treadmill stress test results showed S_T depression which is an indication of cardiac ischemia. PTL! Her coronary arteries were quite clean & her diagnosis is gastric reflux with Prilosec as the treatment. Her S_T segment depression was a false positive?! ... So the cardiologist said. Her skipped heart beats which keep her awake at night, were deemed insignificant. She was instructed to ignore them. Easier said than done when her heart "flip-flops" in her chest most of the night.

Missions Conference at Lolo Community Church flew by. The previous week, we hosted a very New York-Jewish speaker in our home. He was chilled to the bone by our fluctuating spring weather & could hardly believe that we were 25 miles from the nearest Starbucks! We made up for that by treating him to a delicious dinner at Cafe Firenza, a delightful Italian restaurant only 3 miles away. The week before that, I spoke at Lolo Community's monthly women's meeting about "goodness" - the "fruit of the spirit" for March. God gave me new insights to share during my research for this talk. I may yet post some of those insights in the near future.

Genny, now 13 + years old, is declining quickly. She has trouble standing up or walking up & down stairs. She refuses regular dog food that she used to skarf. She still eats bits of "human food" & drinks some water. We are uncertain whether her frequent panting means she is just hot or in pain. We can feel a mass in her abdomen & she has a tumor behind her left ear. We are treasuring these last days & weeks with her. She is the middle golden in the above picture, taken about 4 years ago.