Little Raquel

For those of you following the progress of Raquel, soon to be a month old, she is still in the hospital with respiratory problems. It was touch and go for the first few days, but now, after almost a week, there are signs of improvement. The x-rays show one lung is still congested, but it has begun to clear up. Tonight (Saturday) she will be spending the night out of the incubator in Intensive Care. However, Raquel is still connected to monitors in case she has an attack and can't breathe, as has happened on several occasions this week. Militina will stay with her in a private room tonight.

Your prayers are very important and greatly appreciated.

In Prison Again

While I'm posting, I thought I'd mention how appreciated your prayers are for the prison ministry. I wrote about Stefanie back when she first started attending the meetings. Now it appears she may be about to get transferred to the mainland in preparation for being returned to Belgium to complete her sentence.

In the meeting this week she thanked me for coming to the prison. "You have done a good work on me," she said. "When I first started coming, I had no faith. Now I want to believe, I want to know about God." I told her that it's God who's doing the work; I'm only a vessel, an instrument, a messenger.

I hear that some (many?) pastors take Monday off, and Abbie and I can understand why. We're away from the house from 10:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night every Sunday. Bro. Jose Carlos is helping with the adult Sunday School since the first of the year, so I now usually have only three lessons to present(in three languages) instead of four lessons/sermons. But Monday morning I go to the consulate, and I get home about 2:00 p.m., in time for a bite to eat before leaving for the prison at about 3:15. I get home again about 6:00. Somewhere along about 2:30 or 2:45, something in me says, "Oh, no...almost time to leave for the prison. If I could just rest for a while." But I always leave the prison feeling stronger than when I went. I think that's what Jesus was talking about in John 4, when He was hungry and rested by the well while the disciples went for food. By the time they got back, He had been refreshed with food they didn't know about.

Pray for Stefanie and the others, that when they leave the prison, they won't leave God behind, too. For that we must trust in the One that has begun the good work in them, that He will perfect it unto the day of the Jesus Christ. (Phil. 1:6)

Baby Raquel Update

Raquel (born Dec 30) is still in Intensive Care, but Roberto said she's improved. The x-rays show that the fluid in her lungs is more liquid now and not as dense, making it easier for her to expel the fluids when she coughs. She was able to nurse some today, whereas she's been fed through a tube for the past couple of days. Still no prognosis, though. Thank you for keeping her in your prayers.

Request for prayer

A week ago I posted the news about Raquel, Roberto and Mili's baby. Today she was taken to the emergency room with respiratory problems and the doctors immediately put her in Intensive Care. She caught a cold this past week and apparently has gotten her air passages blocked. She starts coughing and then can't breathe. Thanks for praying. I'll keep you posted.

It's A Small World After All...but let's keep things in perspective

Disney put music to the words we've all said at one time or another. I still remember how surprised I was to visit the Central Baptist Church in Kiev on a Sunday evening and run into an American (not a missionary) who had visited our church in Madeira a couple of years before. It was the first time for both of us to visit Ukraine, the only evening either of us would be at that church, etc., etc... "Small world," we said.

A few weeks ago I got a phone call from a lady who lives in Lisbon, saying that her nephew, who lives in Funchal, had accepted the gospel and was interested in attending our services. She had been witnessing to him for some years now. In the phone conversation, I asked where João Paulo Wagner works. (He´s known by his last name...common sense, I guess. João Paulo is a common enough name; even used by a Pope or two, but Wagners---here in Portugal anyway---will be very few and far between.) He happens to work in the same place as Roberto, one of the main men in our church. Obviously they know each other, although they don't work in direct contact. "Small world," I thought again. Then I thought again.

Funchal is NOT THAT SMALL: 150,000 population or so. What are the odds that Wagner and Roberto would be working in the same location? And as for the smallness of the world, let's be realistic. This world is a BIG place, unless you're comparing it to the sun or the galaxies. But we live our lives here on this planet and even with all the fast air travel, 6000 miles is still a long ways to go. I read about someone trying to rebuild in the south Louisiana area, who complained about having to drive 50 miles for a box of nails. Small and short, big and far --- it's all relative. Running into Phil in Kiev and both of us there on a one-night-stand sort of thing?! What I knew then only came home forcibly last week with the appearance of Wagner in our midst: how easily we play down God.

Isn't that, in fact, what we're doing when we explain away such "improbable coincidences"? If we're not careful, we'll be talking like evolutionists, who believe that everything happens by chance. If the world is small enough, anything can happen. I could run into an acquaintance halfway around the world from where either of us live; a new convert could be working in the same place as a faithful believer. Of course, if the field of options is too large, then you have to increase the time factor...a billion years here and there always comes in handy on the larger scale of events.

I see I have to stop selling God short by explaining that "it's a small world." I wonder if Disney would be open to a suggestion. I propose they change the words of the song to: "He's a big God, after all..."

New Visitor in Services

According to the doctor, Raquel was supposed to make her appearance sometime around January 17. Instead, she was born December 30, in time to watch the New Year's fireworks display, although I doubt she did. Her parents, Roberto and Militina (Mili), however, had a good view from the third floor of the hospital. Everything went well, and Mili got to come home on New Year's Day.

In this photo, taken with a cell phone, Abbie is holding Raquel, who's about a week old in the picture. Her brother, Nataniel, is 3 now. Somewhere in an old album, I'm sure we could find a picture of Abbie holding her own "Raquel". Our first child, Rachel, was also born in the month of December, but that was in another century.

Of Blessings and Glitches

We are now far enough into the new year that a routine is returning to life. Abbie and I both have had head colds and coughs off and on over the past month or more, and we thank God that these problems seem to be going away.

There are always problems, however, and although some are minor in the overall scheme of things, we are affected by them. We had one day with the electricity going on and off a number of times and for extended periods...a result of that being that my desktop computer has stopped connecting to the Internet. I still have to resolve that software issue. Then we were without Internet for a couple of days, which brought its own annoying consequences in not being able to work and communicate as we have become used to doing. But as I said, in the overall scheme of things, these are mere glitches and nuisances. Our goals and aims must be on a grander scale than this.

I like the Portuguese translation of Hosea 6:3 "Conheçamos e prossigamos em conhecer ao Senhor." Literally: Let us get to know, and let us continue on getting to know the Lord." I rejoice to know that we are not alone in that pursuit. Thank you for your prayers and encouraging words.

Why I'm Happy I Evolved (Not!)

The January 1 edition of the NYTimes carried an opinion article by Olivia Judson, identified as an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London. Entitled "Why I'm Happy I Evolved", the main body of the article points out some of the strange situations and creatures in nature that are "too wacky to invent." In her concluding paragraphs, the author says,

"Some people want to think of humans as the product of a special creation, separate from other living things. I am not among them; I am glad it is not so. I am proud to be part of the riot of nature, to know that the same forces that produced me also produced bees, giant ferns and microbes that live at the bottom of the sea.
For me, the knowledge that we evolved is a source of solace and hope. I find it a relief that plagues and cancers and wasp larvae that eat caterpillars alive are the result of the impartial - and comprehensible - forces of evolution rather than the caprices of a deity.
More than that, I find that in viewing ourselves as one species out of hundreds of millions, we become more remarkable, not less so. No other animal that I have heard of can live so peaceably in such close quarters with so many individuals that are unrelated. No other animal routinely bothers to help the sick and the dying, or tries to save those hurt in an earthquake or flood.
Which is not to say that we are all we might wish to be. But in putting ourselves into our place in nature, in comparing ourselves with other species, we have a real hope of reaching a better understanding, and appreciation, of ourselves."

Glad not to be a product of special creation? Relieved that plagues are the result of the impartial forces of evolution? Not me. Is it any wonder that many of the great skeptic thinkers were (are)(cannot help but be?) overcome with despair? To think that we are at the "mercy" of blind chance and impartial forces leaves me with the feeling of being aboard an airplane without a pilot, or at best an automatic pilot controlled by commands generated randomly. There's no destination, and there's every chance of being plunged into oblivion by a quirky "impartial" force that has no interest in whether we are well or not, or whether we ever arrive anywhere.

Like another evolutionist of whom I read this week, who argued that the tremendous regularity and predictability of nature is evidence against Intelligent Design, the author here mentions the "remarkable fact...that no other animal routinely helps the sick..." Paul says, "blindness in part has happened to Israel"; this is not blindness in part, these people are "willingly ignorant." Dark is light and light is dark...truth is error and error is truth.

I'm happy I didn't evolve. I'm relieved to know that in spite of all the confusion, violence, pain and distress the passengers on this planetary ship undergo, history does have a destination and we are not adrift without purpose. The seas are often rough, we get tossed from one side to another, but surely and steadily we are steaming ahead to the destination God announced long ago.