Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Going West Again...

It's 6:30 AM and I'm sitting at Brussels Airport. My taxi made it here within 15 minutes, and it only took me another 20 minutes to go through special security and drop off my luggage. I'm excited. I'm headed to Palm Springs to attend the AMEN Conference, after which I'm going to spend ten days with friends at the West Coast. As of November 9, I'll be helping out at Uchee Pines again for another few months. I'm so glad that I don't have to spend the winter in Belgium.

The month of October wasn't even a nice one in Germany. I returned from there this past Sunday. I had a very blessed time with family and friends. Actually, I realized that I hadn't been in my home country for such a long period of time (i. e. 3 1/2 weeks) since I moved to Belgium in 2004. My mother celebrated her 70th birthday, which was a blessing. She is still going strong, and my father is doing pretty well, in spite of his condition. Only my grandmother hasn't been doing great. She is getting anxious and nervous about things, and thus she needs more care now. But given the fact that she is 92, her physical condition is amazing.

Anyway, I'm thankful for the time I was able to spend with them and to reconnect with friends. Now off to the next thing!

My family
My mother to the right with her sister

My dessert
Alp Horn players in the Black Forest

Monday, October 3, 2016

Two Weeks in Retrospect

I was planning on writing again earlier, but circumstances didn't allow me to do so. A couple weeks ago, I got pretty sick with the flu. It occured that I over-exhausted myself during the weekend. On September 17, I was asked to give the sermon at my church, and the following Sunday, I organized a cooking school at my home. Those events took a lot of my energy (mentally and physically), and were followed by a tension headache, which robbed me of an adequate amount of sleep. So the flu virus got me. It was definitely not pleasant, however I took it out of the Lord's hands. According to the Spirit of Prophecy, disease helps the system to get rid of impurities and toxins, and after all the stresses of this past summer, I definitely had enough of those!

I'm still recovering at this point, yet feeling so much better. Yesterday, I arrived at my parent's home after attending the third "ENAD Conference" at a beautiful SDA center near Stuttgart. It was such a blessing to spend a few days together with a lot of health professionals and other dedicated people, most of which being younger than myself. It was great being able to do networking and to find out what's happening in Europe in terms of medical missionary efforts; in particular in Germany. There were quite a few people I hadn't seen in a while, and also quite a few I had just seen at our camp meeting. Overall, it was a very fruitful and spiritual event. The workshops and spiritual speakers were also excellent. I definitely enjoyed Jesse Zwikers talks, as well as Dr. Heidi Schulz who spoke about epigenetics and other interesting things pertaining to lifestyle and health. There was even one of the leaders from the GC health department. He is going to make a video clip about the event, which will probably be shown at the next GC session. Wow!

Now, I'm going to enjoy about three weeks visiting family and friends - a rare treat! It's definitely getting cooler now. Fall is coming. But at the end of the month, I'll be headed to Southern California to attend the "AMEN Conference" (the US model for the ENAD initiative), before returning to Uchee Pines in November. It looks like this is going to be another treat...

My little helper during cooking school...

...Ruvimbo!

Ready to devour everything
It was car free Sunday in Brussels - it was almost like a ghost town!

My kitchen cabinet remedies - came in handy to treat myself
ENAD Conference attendees
Getting to know each other
Inspiring talks