I just don't know for sure what to think about Jake's condition. Tuesday night when I was at the hospital, he told me that his doctor had told him that he should probably start getting his things together, like in "get your affairs in order" since he was so seriously sick. I also talked to his floor nurse who basically told me the same thing. He even suggested that it would be a good idea for his mother to call him and maybe come out if she could. Pretty serious stuff. So I contacted her and suggested she unblock her phone from receiving calls from Jake and she said she would fly out as soon as she could - she's coming here tomorrow. Yesterday I found out that Jake was being transferred to a different part of the hospital - a part that is for less intensive care patients, i.e., a positive thing! I went there last night to visit him. He's looking better, not quite so jaundiced. He told me then that his doctor has told him they hope to detox him enough to transfer him (no specific date or time-frame) from this hospital to a regular detox facility! I understand that his condition coudl easily go form fair to critical when his liver is affected - if the liver really fails, toxins can move form his liver to his kidneys and to other organs and turn fatally critical very quickly. Oh well, we'll see.
It'll be fun tomorrow when we go to the Stake Youth Conference. It's a missionary theme and several youth will play the role of full-time missionaries and several of us members will play different "investigator" roles with them. We don't know which role (e.g., less-actives returning, inactive members with a grudge about the Church, investigators sort of off the street, etc.) but we'll do it.
Sunday night we and the Floyd's will be the speakers at a Single Adult fireside with the upcoming Pioneer Day as sort of theme. I think Mom is going to relate some of her own personal history, her own pioneer ancestors, with a few stories. i don't know what the Floyd';s will do. I'm putting together a PowerPoint with some slides of my ancestors but with the overall message of "Who is a pioneer?" with the objective to help all those present not just look at ancestors in their pioneer roles but to understand that each of us, here and now, are pioneers in our own situations. That our descendants will look upon us as pioneers in different ways.
But for my talk, I plan to show a few photos of our family and how they are all pioneers -not just your mom and me - in their own ways. I intend to take some photos of the single adults during the dinner before the fireside starts and then quickly inserting those photos into my PowerPoint and point out that they are also pioneers in similar ways in their own circumstances. I see young people now as pioneers in such areas as the new ideas in the world we're coping with such as getting more solidly in the digital age, in solving new questions concerning social, sexual, and other situations of working with questions concerning transgender relationships, stem cell applications, how to deal in our new word of terrorist violence and how to find peace and safety under current world conditions, how to truly be preparing themselves and those around them for the impending Second Coming of Christ and His kingdom, and more. I've only got 10-12 minutes so I hope I'm not cramming too much in!!!
We'll be in a "webinar" Wednesday next week to learn more about this new calling in the Stake "Self Reliance Center" (what used to be called the LDS Employment Center). I do feel a little like a pioneer in this calling!!! 😬 However, the Stake Presidency is in the same boat as well! As a result of this Stake calling, there's a funny spin-off. Apparently it's a very odd thing for a full-time Senior Missionary to have a Stake calling and thus, we have "duel citizenship", i.e., have one foot in in both our home ward and one foot in our "mission ward". We need to have membership in our home ward since it's through that ward that we pay our tithing and our monthly mission rent. We also need membership in our mission ward so we can access the (mission) Stake membership lists for our callings. This appears to be a difficult thing to do but we've solved it more or less I think. I would have thought that this would have come up before with Senior Missionaries but I guess not. Actually when we first came here, President Felix said that we would not be given ward (or stake) callings. I don't think he has an understanding of the level of work or commitment this calling has but it doesn't matter - God does!
Well, the others have arrived so I need to get on with my "day job"!
Love you so much,
Dad
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