| |
March 4, 2009
Letter #10 from Ethiopia
Dear Friends and Family,
Recently I have been having some breathing trouble and had low energy levels. As the recipient of a 2001 heart-valve transplant, I decided to get a check-up from a cardiologist. Last Saturday I got the results from an EKG and from an echocardiogram, and it appears that my transplanted valve is beginning to fail. We were advised to return to the United States promptly for a thorough evaluation before there is further deterioration.
We will leave Addis Ababa tomorrow night and arrive in Louisville Friday evening. We will be staying at the Furlough Home on the campus of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and our mailing address will be:
1044 Alta Vista Road
Louisville, KY 40205
Our email address will remain the same: Bruce and Lora Whearty. We would love to hear from you, as always, but we may be slower than usual in responding.
I already have an appointment with a cardiologist next Wednesday, one week from today. We will be in touch with you as we learn more.
Lora and I are both surprisingly at peace and have been productive, doing the things that we need to do—packing and faxing doctors, emailing insurance companies, saying goodbye to people. Our sleep has been a little broken up but we're doing OK, trusting that the future, as always, is in God’s hands.
Our packing has been interrupted by a steady stream of teachers stopping by, and that makes us feel good. We are confident that, with your help, the small initiatives that we have been able to foster here will continue.
Today, our last full day in Ethiopia, we asked a favor from the marble factory near the school. We had visited this place once before, when the marble window-sills, thresholds, and stair treads were ordered for “our” new apartment, now nearing completion. Marble is common in Ethiopia, the result of the extreme pressures exerted in the complex, tortured landscape of the highlands. Today we weren’t ordering anything, just picking up a small souvenir. I found the little sample that I wanted, a scrap that showed the rough, unimpressive matrix on the surface, as well as the smooth, pure interior. I will carry this small stone with me, both as a reminder of Ethiopia, with its hidden beauty lying dormant behind its troubled face, and as a reminder of the metamorphosis that God can create beneath the surface of our own troubled lives. Someday, perhaps, I’ll have the chance to show it to you.
Thank you all very much for thinking of us and for holding us in your prayers.
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora Whearty
The 2009 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 35 |
|
