It is a highly emotional day.

As I write, my dad is undergoing knee replacement surgery. For a variety of reasons, I'm not up there today. I am ready to hear that he's out of surgery and that things went OK. That will be at least a couple of hours.

Surgery and hospitals stir up emotions in me from Amsale's surgery. And it's weird, because it stirs up emotions I didn't really feel at the moment. When Amsale had open heart surgery, it was all kind of a blur. Only in looking back does the scariness sink in. To make matters worse, I was reading a book set in Ethiopia last night that talked about Black Lion hospital. That's the hospital where I first met Amsale. She was 20 months old and barely 17 pounds, listless, crammed into a filthy room with 5-6 other kids. I remember a few days later begging to get her released from that hospital so we could take her home. I finally had to become the ugly American and simply insist.

So today, while I think about my dad, surgery, and hospitals, I cannot separate out those tender emotions, too. Emotions I'm sure I haven't fully processed. And you can add future anxiety to the mix, too, because I can help but think ahead to when Amsale needs surgery again. What will that be like? Uff-da.

In other news, we will bury a matriarch in the congregation today. Her funeral was Friday. That's always emotional, too.

Now to totally changed the subject (it's my blog -- I can do what I want!), it was a nice crowd yesterday. Here's the sermon:



And that's the news from Browerville.

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