Greetings in Christ!

Here in Germany, this Sunday was a very special one – it’s Pentecost. And tomorrow is a national holiday as well, for the same reason. Amazing, for a country that puts its citizens in jail when they want to educate their children at home, rather than send them to public schools. Kindergarten begins, we’ve been told, at the ripe old age of 18 months. I’m not so sure that the control of the children’s minds has been profitable when I see the way that some of the adults here behave. But there are many nice people here in Germany, and we’ve met a good number of them. Perhaps that’s enough about Germany for now…

Sarah finished up her week-long Greek Intensive course in PA and flew over here to join us. I picked her up at the airport, and together we rode the tram to the central train station, rode the train to a village near the hospital, and then walked the 1.5 miles to the hotel, at about 9:30 at night… So, now we’re all together here.

Kathy continues to improve overall. Her pain levels are at or below what they had been before the operation, if I’m understanding her. She has had problems with nausea, but they do have medications against the nausea, so even that gets taken care of. Our Sunday was spent together for a large portion of the day. We had a good opportunity for personal time with the Lord, and then about 5 o’clock in the evening we “tuned in” to the service at our home church, Pilgrim Christian Fellowship, by dialing a conference line sort of phone using our Skype account. The nursing staff was quite fascinated to listen as well when they came to take Kathy’s Blood Pressure and some other measurements. Brother Darrell had a wonderful Pentecost message as he preached from the Book of Joel. It is a challenge to think about what our dreams and visions are as members of the Body of Christ, both old and young.
We still haven’t had a consultation with the doctor or doctors who were scrubbed in on the surgery, so we don’t know what all they found, and what all they did, but I know that conversation will happen sometime before we leave. We’ll continue on, waiting for that opportunity. The surgeon was again Dr. Ritter-Lang, who performed Kathy’s previous Disk Replacements, and who has done over 3,000 other disk replacements or disk replacement surgeries. He has an assistant, Dr. Deiri, who is a Syrian man. Dr. Deiri speaks excellent English. He was very good and helpful to have on call that night after the surgery when Kathy was in the ICU or Recovery Room. There were some difficulties that he helped us through, and he is such a kind-hearted and patient man. His father is also an Orthopedic Surgeon, and so he learned some things from his dad, as well as from his regular medical training. School is good, but there are some things that you just don’t learn at school, but through experience. It’s always nice when you don’t have to learn from your own mistakes, but you can learn from someone else’s mistakes…

 

I’ll sign off for now, but we are grateful for your prayers – there have been difficulties and challenges, but we’ve felt God’s guidance and protection all along the way. He is faithful!

Love in Christ,

Duff, Kathy, and Sarah

PS: As of Monday morning,  Duff adds that “she’s had a chance to shower now, and is dressed in regular clothing and she walked over to the hotel to sit and visit with us.”