Year in Review- Summer

Summer was a busy time for me and a stressful time for Steph.

My summer was marked by two big events.  The first was my mission trip to Haiti in early July.  I went with my senior high youth group from church.  There were a total of 12 students and 6 adults.  Despite our limited time (a week) I feel like we were really able to make a difference in the people we came across when we were down there.  They are so appreciative of so little.  We spent our time handing out food, praying for people, playing with the kids at the orphanage we stayed at, and putting on Vacation Bible School in the remote areas of southwestern Haiti.  I could go on and on, but I won't.  If you want to know more you can feel free to ask.  There are also a number of pictures on my facebook page.

The other big event for me this summer was our church's junior high bible camp.  Although it is a jr high camp, I am able to work with a number of the senior high students who go there to work.  Our role is to basically make sure the whole week runs smoothly and the kids are having fun.  After the campers go to sleep, we plan for the next day and have our own small group time.  This kept us up til 4am some nights.  It was totally worth it though and I was able to enter in to the lives and minds of those high school students.  It was an amazing time, and in many ways much more powerful than my trip to Haiti.  Incredible to think that God could affect me more in Wisconsin than he could in Haiti.

While I was preparing to go to Haiti , Steph was preparing to welcome a new family member to the house. And apparently being 7-9 months pregnant in the middle of summer with a marginally functional air-conditioner is not pleasant.  None of that compared to challenge of having optic neuritis. Don't know what that is?  Basically, she lost vision in her left eye.  The doctors didn't know why and couldn't give a good clue of when it would come back, their best guess is that it would probably come back after the pregnancy. It started to come back when I was in Haiti and fully returned shortly thereafter.  We had an appointment with a neurologist, which was didn't resolve anything.  He said that he thought she might have Multiple Sclerosis.  The optic neuritis would qualify as one scleroses, but he had no clear evidence that there was more than one.  We have yet to go back for a follow up after the pregnancy, but since Steph has not had any other episodes, we se no reason to go back yet.

To recap:  so far... outdoor Twins baseball, conference championship, new house, 1st anniversary, trip to Haiti, and temporary blindess- and Jordan hasn't even been born yet.