Nelson’s Journal, 2/22/22

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Margaret

When a couple is expecting a new baby, the thought process is like a see-saw—up and down. Once the baby comes, will all our current freedoms evaporate? Or will it add lots of fun to our lives? Should we hurry to make changes before we can’t anymore?

Nelson was ruminating on this in early February. With the baby’s due date only a month away, he wondered how soon he should make the decision to stay close to Ann Sophie till the baby came. But that was just one unknown on a list of many, so he focused instead on meeting the goal of this one day.

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February 2, 2022

I have a hypothetical job as an electrician, starting May 1, with some other stuff starting anytime Tim (the electrician) gets a permit. Hard to imagine doing something like that as it’s been a while since I had a job like that, probably since 1999 or so.

Lots of self employment work since then, but not working for the man, other than for DY at Sawyer Hardware and Lumber. But that place is now a thing of the past. We are just doing what we feel led to do, not really having a long term plan, as so many things are unknown and so often change as we go.

I don’t know what it will be like to have a little baby and to try and raise a child, to get fully into doing that. I imagine it will be fun. I don’t think it will be too hard, to be honest. I look forward to it. Why change careers at the same time, or shortly after? It has to do with slowing down.

I was thinking of trying to convince Tim to let me work 4, 10 hour days instead of 5, 8 hour days. That way I would have 1 day completely open in addition to the weekend, because there is still church.

At 5pm I passed the truck inspection, got it insured, and even got new license plates for it. That was my goal, other than getting it down into Waipio Valley. I am debating going this weekend with Bates and Jake, maybe taking a group down there with a van. I don’t know. There’s always the slight chance Annso could go into labor and that would be terrible to miss. I wonder if it’s worth taking a chance on that. But once the baby comes, there will be no more chances for stuff like that.

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“The wisdom from above is…. open to reason.” (James 3:17)

Nelson’s Journal, 1/31/22

Posted on March 9, 2023 by Margaret

About two years after the start of the pandemic, Hawaii is still dominated by Covid rules, actually establishing more and more of them. Since Nelson and Ann Sophie live in Kona, on the big island of Hawaii, they are subject to all of them.

In Nelson’s way of thinking, after being compliant with a long list of pandemic regulations blanketing the entire ministry and scores of young people needing to be quarantined as they arrived on the island (a logistical nightmare), he seemed to reach his limit. Mandatory weekly Covid tests for the whole gang had become debilitating, with government vans invading the campus, checking on compliancy. To Nelson it seemed like they were in a foreign land, not the United States of America.

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January 31, 2022

“The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” is a book I’m reading that Annso gave me for my birthday. It’s almost prophetic that she gave it to me. She is that for me, in a way, and much more, with a baby on the way.

It’s the last day of January 2022. The date sounds fictional. We are making decisions based on vaccine mandates and dodging this and that new rule.

I got fined $250 for bringing a group up Mauna Loa (Long Mountain volcano) on the wrong date, because I supposedly put everyone’s life in danger having that many people in a cabin who could have been wiped out by the ruthless killer, the Omicron variant of the sinister Corona virus (with a 99.9% survival rate). It’s, “Don’t think. Just obey.”

The book is like medicine to me in a way, giving me an excuse or authorizing a break from the high speed pace of the campus and Kokua Crew. Been working to imagine a 7-3 job training as an electrician. I don’t know where it will end up, and it’s hard to imagine working any job for 3 years—especially for another person.

The book says that slowing down can look a lot like failure. Interesting. There sure is a lot of ego wrapped up in moving fast and doing a lot and letting people see you do a lot.

Lord, thank you for leading us. I pray for the courage to carry it out and the wisdom to avoid costly failures that don’t cost only me, but my family, too. Thank you for the encouragement to overcome at least some of the ego that keeps us running so hard for so long. Thank you for your grace and mercy to see me through, despite myself.

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“It is vain for you to rise up early, to take rest late, to eat the bread of toil.“ (Psalm 127:2)

A Bad Phone Call

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Margaret

After sharing a couple of Nelson’s journal entries from one year ago, we’ll go back to the day when he first heard the word cancer. We’ll see how his emotions responded after being told about it. He had gone to the emergency room after struggling to breathe, while also suffering from sharp pains in other areas of his body. His coughing wouldn’t stop, and getting a doctor to see him quickly on the big Island of Hawaii wasn’t possible. So it was the ER or nothing.

Doctors there admitted him and were in the process of gathering data through tests when Nelson first heard the word cancer. He was alone in a hospital bed, because Ann Sophie was home with newborn Will. Covid restrictions in Hawaii were still extensive, and she was running into problems when trying to visit Nelson in the hospital. But she was determined and ended up finding a nurse who “looked the other way,” allowing her to walk in.

The uncertainty of his symptoms was bad enough, but then he got a phone call with some terrible news.

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May 10 2022

Today is day 2 at the hospital, my second time coming in to the ER because the pain and coughing was so severe. Annso pretty much insisted I do it. I went to campus and taught the Korean Foundation School then came home, ate a nice salad with her and came up here [to the hospital].

Once I was here, there was this really young doctor who zeroed right in on fluid in the lungs. Once I told him I was coughing so hard at night and that I was so out of breath, he ran and got a mini-ultrasound machine and found fluid in my heart cavity and lungs. That led them to do tons of tests, including a CT scan showing a tumor or growth in my neck and a few lymph nodes in the lungs about 11 mm at the biggest.

All of a sudden the fluid makes sense, the cough, and none of it has to do with the thyroid, which is what everyone has been looking at. So the admitting doc calls me on the phone and tells me she really thinks it’s cancer and so does the tech who does these scans all the time.

They will test more tomorrow, including a full body CT scan to see what else is going on. Maybe there are things growing in other places, not that these places aren’t severe enough.

When she told me that, I could hardly believe it, but at the same time, I could. All the intense pain and coughing now add up. I even said a couple times, “If I was told I had stage 3 lung cancer, I would believe it, because it feels like I think that would feel.”

It’s yet to be confirmed, and I would love for her to be wrong, but everyone is praying and it seems a likely scenario.

Lots of things come into perspective all of a sudden, but I try not to go worse-case-scenario right away. I think of what happened to Papa and wonder, “Will I be alive this time next year? Will I be alive at Christmas? Will I be alive still even in August?” Unknown for all of us, but especially me.

I don’t know anything, but the people I worry about the most are Annso and Will. What will they do? How hard for them will it be? I would have the easier situation, and they’d be left to pick up the pieces. How terrible. How terrible for her to be turned into a single Mom so soon after our answer to prayer and miracle [baby].

I don’t even want to ask WHY. Doesn’t matter, and no answer will come to that one anyway. I just think of those who went before me and how they did it. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that and I can beat it, whatever “it” is.

God, help me to know what to do now, to be the best man to Annso, strong and optimistic, someone she can rely on and knows what to do, the one who may not know, but knows who to trust. I pray for strength. I pray for healing, for a miracle, for different results on tomorrow’s test. For there to even be a mistake somehow. Thank you for getting Annso in here today. That was a miracle. I pray she gets in tomorrow, too. I pray for supernatural strength for her, too. What will happen to us? To me? To Will? Tomorrow will worry about itself. Amen.

“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down.” (Proverbs 12:25)