I have another request: Please pray for Ruth, JJ’s mom, who will have open ❤ surgery on Friday, February 13. The projected timeline: 5-7 days hospitalization; 6-12 weeks recovery.
She has had a heart condition since childhood. When I interned for Intel in Oregon during the summer of ’08 I was privileged to type up Mr. N’s life story – a request he had received so his grandchildren would know him better, and that he dutifully attended to in a handwritten journal I deciphered and loaded into Word. To remind you – Mr. N was JJ’s maternal grandfather, and therefore Ruth’s dad. The diagnosis of Ruth’s heart condition figured prominently in the Life Story, and the family actually left the mission field (I think they were serving in what was then the Belgian Congo, I think) for a year to seek treatment at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore from an eminent pediatric cardiologist.
344. I’m all done Goodbye
Since then, Ruth has grown up and has had a family of her own – JJ is her eldest. The picture above (bottom left of the collage) is a poem written by JJ’s dad that was posted on the bulletin board in the room I stayed in at Chez J when I was in Burundi. The family used to serve in Burundi but I think they were barred from re-entry when the war got really bad and so the elder J’s moved to Tanzania. This is the boat that JJ’s Dad built:
Wings of the Morning
originally posted Feb 6, 2013
I was staying at ChezJ in March 2011 when JJ’s Dad called (they work in a neighboring country) and told him that their recently completed ship, “Wings of the Morning” had been badly smashed up in a violent storm on the big lake. A couple of years of work had been destroyed. I have zero sailing experience and I have no idea how Mr. J&Co. managed to build something like that in the first place, but I felt the disappointment deeply for them anyway. When I woke up in the hospital, Mom brought me a copy of the latest Missions magazine and I was troubled to find a letter in the back from the J’s, telling of the ship’s demise. I was troubled because I knew the story to be true, so this was a piece of evidence in favor of reality.
Well,they rebuilt. 😊
And now you can see the new vessel (in a nice shade of green) on the cover of the new Missionary Handbook.
Learning How... 