I Habe a Cold

Bery wonduhvul day. Bad cold and dentist. I can’t breave and dentist fills my mouf wid coddon and odder stuff. Do you understand? Id is nod a good day, no… Now I habe a cold and a toofache. Nod a habby camper. I wend to bed for resd ov day and worked on my drawing ov a cad. That made me much habbier. I like mai siamese cad I did in colored bencil.

Seriously, I did come home from Vitória with a cold and everyone is laughing at the way I talk. I don’t feel that bad, but I sound pretty funny. And I did hit the dentist today. Gotta love having dental work done here. My original crown fell out in June and today I got the final crown glued in. It took, well, let’s see… a visit to put in cement and let that sit for a month to see if I needed a root canal (no, I didn’t). So then I go back to have the tooth drilled out and a temporary crown made. Then I return to have an impression made. I return to have the crown glued on and it shatters into a million pieces. I go back and have the tooth drilled out further and make another temporary. Then I go back to make another impression. Then I return for a fitting of the metal undercrown. Then I return to do a color match on the porcelain crown. Then I return to have the whole shooting match glued in. Only 9 visits, not counting the two times I had to run in and have the temporary re-glued. Along the way I had two other teeth filled and had minor gum surgery (all on separate occasions). Since I so LOVE going to the dentist (NOT!!!!!), ask me how much I enjoyed all this. Today the glue has sent my nerves into raging pain and I am hoping this doesn’t mean something bad for the tooth, since it hasn’t hurt at all through all this!

Our trip to Vitoria was just grand. We enjoyed the church where João preached. (The photo to the left is of the church - I have no photos because mysteriously my camera's battery was not charged, although I had fully charged it before travelling. But my niece did send me a photo of our family she took in front of the church.) His family came out each night and that was great as well. Many of the young people I worked with in Vitoria came to the church to see us and I was just ecstatic to get to see them and their children. I was in my early 30’s and they in their late teens/early twenties back in the 1980’s, so now we are all middle aged. It meant so much to see them. It is great to live long enough and stick around enough to get to see some of the results of your ministry. My time in Vitoria was so very short, around four years, and I’ve been gone for 20 years, so it’s amazing to me that anyone still remembers. It was a great reminder of the blessings of ministry and how important it is to be faithful to calling we have been given.

PS: To my non-native English speaking readers, I am sorry for the first paragraph. It is written in "cold" dialect. Just read it outloud and try to imagine how someone with a cold sounds! (Substituting "v" for "b", "th" for "d" or "f", "s" for "d", etc.

PSS: Next day - no more talking funny and no more toothache. And thanks so much for your "reactions" to my blog. That helps me a lot.