I Want My Mommy

This refrain that I echo whenever I feel especially sick, is sure to provoke laughter from my husband. It is my pitiful cry when I feel frustrated and helpless against germs! Yesterday as I fought to breath against a lousy cold, I repeated it several times. He was sweet to rub my feet, fix me hot tea, and bring me meals in bed, but I didn't feel better. I mostly just had to sleep off the fever. Today, even though I have a cough, I feel better sans fever and able to breath through my nose! Still felt crummy enough to stay at home from church, the first time I've done that in a long long time (I can't even remember when...) With all the elderly people at our church, I don't figure I needed to spread my germs!
In fact, I probably did that on Friday, at our church's anniversary. We celebrated 123 years. Our church has the tradition of all day prayer meeting, starting at 6AM. And yes there are a lot of people there at that hour - probably the most well attended hour of the day, as people come before work. Anyway, every 30 minutes a new person leads the prayer time, so it is quite varied. And people come and go. João started the day at 6 AM and I ended it at 6PM. Then at 7PM we had the climatic closing worship service with a reasonably full house (Friday is just a horrible traffic day and many people arrived late). Since so much was happening, I lead the worship for João, as having to remember everything and preach is quite difficult. The service was full of many events, like the Lord's Supper, a long choir presentation, a wonderful sermon (by my husband of course) and brief presentations of our church's work through its 9 different departments (missions, education, music, social work, recreation, culture, administration, school (with 270 students) and communications. The highlight, came at the end when the coordinator of each ministry area stood at different points on the auditorium and we asked each every member of the church to go and stand in the area of ministry where they would be involved in the coming year. To see a thousand people making their way to the various ministries was very moving.
After the worship there was a gigantic cake that everyone seemed to enjoy. Me, I went and collapsed as I was feeling the effects of the fever by that time. Funny, when you are in the midst of the event you feel nothing, but by the end you are drained!
People kept joking, funny you don't look 123 years old. But by 10PM, I felt it. Since, however, I am on the road to recovery, guess I'll make it to 123 and not stop at 55!