SO tired and needing sleep.

 It is after 2 a.m. and camp is over., It is bitter sweet to be over. I have something I wanted to share but I am SO tired. not much sleep and I keep falling asleep so I hope that I will be able to sleep better being back in my own bed. Forgive me not finishing a post. I'll explain about these pictures on my next post.

The Tabernacle Choir - My Talented Brother

I went to see my brother sing. He is a member of a world famous choir. We were on vacation at a international family reunion so many of our family went to see him sing. 


I think that it is wonderful that they could get so many of our family together from all over the world. I will post about the reunion later but wanted to share this part now.
 
This is a short video. It is my brother who is singing. I am going through some hard health problems dealing with a cat parasite that I can't seem to get rid of. My health has been stressing me and when I went to see him sing, I felt peaceful about it. 
 
This is them practicing a song. I knew the words were coming up in one of my favorite hymns so I just did this little clip of him singing "all is well." I pray that this parasite doesn't kill me but if it does, "all is well" as in the end, it really is in God's hands.
 
At one point, the choir left between the practice and the performance and he knew we were there so he stayed in his seat. It was kinda cool seeing him up there in all those seats by himself. 
 
To get into this choir, you have a sent in audition. If they like what they see, they give you a face to face audition. Then, a written test on reading music. 

If you pass both of those, you then have to be in a feeder choir for three months and not be late once or miss any performances. Then, if you prove you are reliable, you then go on a waiting list until someone retires or drops out. 
 
For men, it is easier to move forward as they are more busy in life moving for work etc so my brother moved up fairly quickly but it was still a long process. His wife's brother and his wife were also in the choir for many years.
 
 At the end of the performance, they brought out the “guest” singer and sang to her and had her husband join her on the platform while the orchestra and choir sang this song to them. Everyone had tears in their eyes including the guest whose face was on the jumbo screen with tears streaming. 

I don’t think you can hear this song without a tear being shed. It is a short video of just them singing the words, “God be with you till we meet again.” 

I don’t know that I will ever have the opportunity to see my brother sing live again and one never knows when our time on earth is over. 

I just felt that it was special that I could see him achieve a life long dream of joining my mother as a member of that choir as she was a member of that choir for ten years. To you I say, “God be with YOU till we meet again!”

Read and Sing Along Book - Funny Mistake

I have several different children books that are "read along" where you have someone record themselves reading or singing the story.
 
In the past, I have purchased a few and had the kids grandparents read the books doing a few pages each. 

For my grandchildren, I thought it would be cute to have their aunts each do a page along with grandma. 

I have had my parents and I read a few different books so even when they pass away, the grandchildren will know their voice. Check out my blog post about that here.


I even have the grandparents reading "The night before Christmas" and video taped it and put it on youtube so that all the grandchildren no matter where they live can enjoy being read to by great-grandparents. 

This is an idea you can do for your grandchildren. You can read a book and video you reading it while showing the pages and then post it online so the kids can watch and hear it whenever they want. Wouldn't it be cute to do a book a week for your grandchildren that are far away so when they do see you, they will recognize your voice. 

On the top video, the girls messed up their song and I wanted them to rerecord it but we decided to keep it as it was funny. Hope you enjoy it!

Baby Signing Machine - Adorable

My daughter has taught her daughter sign language. Basic signs for things she may want or need. 
 
Her daughter is such a happy baby because all of her needs are being met. She signs "more, thanks, please, potty, tired, diaper change, etc" 
 
She is so cute on the first video asking for "more" pickles, saying "please" and "thank you." Each child will alter the signs to fit them. 
 
The top picture is her asking for more. She touches the tips of her fingers together.The "thank you" sign is usually from the chin but she signs it on her chest and then out. You can see her doing that in the second photo above.

The third photo is her asking, "please." When she signs, "please" she scratches her chest and says, "Pst, pst." it is the cutest thing. I find the girls when asking for something from me saying, "Pst, pst" for "please" now. It always brings a smile to my face. 
 
She also signs, "Done" when she wants to get down but it looks an awful lot like, "Dancing and Music" signs to me but her mom can usually tell the difference. It is a great way to help your baby communicate with the adults in its world. 


The second video shows her waving and saying "hi" to me which she did anytime anyone walked into the room. She then signs music when all the girls are singing. She signs that and "all done" very similarly but in context, you can figure it out easily enough.  
 
I really wanted to post more pictures of her on here but with camp coming and it is 3 a.m. and I still need to pack myself and post for two more days, I think I will let this be my post for today and hopefully I can add more later as she is SO adorable! The last pictures are her so tired she didn't even wake to leave. I think we ran her ragged while she was here.


I LOVE being a grandma and hope to enjoy LOTS more grandchildren!

Jr Leader Pirates - Ready to Plunder

 I have girls camp this coming week so just know that my posts are going to be small. I have to share that at this point in my summer, I am kinda wishing school would start. :-)

I have my family camping the next week and that will also be a pretty short week so I will try to share interesting things but things that won't take me much time to post.

I bought some iron on patches a few months ago for about $2 for the bag and it had 35 or so patches in it. It had lots of these skull and cross bones patches.

Princess Five took a hand full to cheer camp as they made t-shirts cutting them up and decorating them and they ironed on these patches.

When we decided what to do for Jr. Leader camp day, we decided to make them the "Pirates" trying to get the girls to get off the well used paths and lure them into troubled waters.

I had exactly 8 patches left.

I had some skull charms that came when I got a bag with several different charms in it for a few dollars. The bag had exactly 8 of these cute skull charms that I just put on red ribbon for each girl.
I had some pirate hats I was going to use but decided I wanted the bandana / tied pirate look. I went to a second hand store specially to look for some fabric to make these scarf / bandanas.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found this Aeropostle scarf with little skulls on it in the loose weave fabric I was looking for. My father in heaven has been so good to me these past few weeks. With not feeling well, I have just kept praying that everything I would need would show up so I could have the strength to get what I needed to for camp without totally exhausting myself.


The rack it was on was just wheeled out and I had some other fabric off the shelf I was considering using but when I saw this, I knew it was just for me.

I  folded it corner to corner a few times an when it was about the size of a bandana I cut them into pieces. Guess how many pieces or scarves I got out of the large scarf? YEP exactly 8. Seriously incredible that it just happened to be there and it would be the exact size needed to work.

The camp fund got depleted accidentally by someone's oversight so I have been trying really hard to find ways to keep the budget down as now everything I purchase is out of my pocket. I knew I had some white t-shirts in my sewing room stash.

I dug out some white shirts and found a stash of these long tanks. I am sure I purchased them to make pj's out of for one of the girls birthday or something. I asked the girls what they thought to see if they thought the other girls would like the tanks verses long t-shirt.

Princess Five said she thought if she cut them up and made holes in the neck and laced the bottom of  the shirt which she cut off and made into a tie.

She cut it to make it look like a V on the neck. They came out really cute. I needed to have all the skulls ironed on and then once I had the scarvess cut, I laced the ribbon through to the charm.

I am so tired that I was dreaming sitting up and wrote, "I laced the ribbon through the vegetable." So tired!

I am not sure why the photos won't allow me to scroll around them but I am toooooo tied to care at this point.

The finished bags had their shirt that they could cut up any way they wanted. The charm and the scarf. I think they are going to be really cute pirates. I have eye patches for each girl.which they will get at the beginning of their hike.  I can't wait to share all the cute things we are doing for camp with you.

Hopefully, I can stay up enough to finish off some blog posts tomorrow and show you some before I head to camp. I have lots of gratitude moment trying to put this thing together and my Father in Heaven is looking out for me and I will hopefully hare a few of those stories as well.

 

How To Cut Up Mango For Dehydration and Freezing

I got a suburban FULL of ripe beautiful mangos from the food bank this past week. You can see by my last few days post, I have been running and haven't had time for sleep and haven't posted much. 

With the internet problem, with a reunion last weekend, with distributing the mangos in the suburban with the air conditioner broken, sitting lots and in and out of a hot car it sever hot weather, I am SO tired.

I ended up going on the girls camp hike today all the way to the end. I wore my Birkenstocks the entire way. They aren't made for hiking and while on the hike, I fantisized about Berkenstock merging with Ugg boots again and went as far as to imagine them merging with Nike or another big shoe maker to get the support and cork arch support in other types of shoes. Click here for a post on Birks. Here is another post about how I customize them.

I (I should say "We" finished as Princess Four was a trooper helping for days and Princess Five did what she could)  finally finished dehydrating and freezing all the mango's we had. I wanted to dehydrate a ton of them but only got the big dehydrator filled two times and the little dehydrator once. They take longer to dry than some other fruits but they are SO good dehydrated. 
 
I spent Monday distributing mangos. As you can see, I kept a ton to dry myself as I usually get carried away distributing items and sometimes forget to keep some for myself. I had the girls help me from the start as I have been so busy getting ready for camp and not feeling well with the swollen feet.

I made a video of how I cut the mango for dehydrating and how to cut it for freezing. I thought this would be a dumb thing to post but I had several people who I gave some mangoes to calling asking how to get more fruit off. 

For dehydration: Start at the outer edge cutting thin slices until you get to the pit in the center, then slice off as much as you can on the bottom of that side and top as the pit is fat in the middle which leaves lots of fruit on the top and bottom unless you curve around and cut it off. You can dehydrate all the pieces. 

Once you have the sides done, turn and do the same with the edges cutting it thin and curving the knife around the edges of the pit to get all the fruit off. I enjoy eating the smaller pieces as much as the bigger ones. 
 
To cut them up for salads or for yogurt or just to eat, start at the top center and curve your knife down the pit at the center. Do both sides and this will give you two large pieces of mango. Then I slice them once or twice length wise and then two or three across the center about the size of potatos for potato salad. I then cut the edges the same way getting two longer pieces that will chunk by cutting a few cross cuts. 

You can then cut off all the smaller pieces off the corners etc. You can either dehydrate them or freeze them in a different container for smoothies or shakes if you don't want the odd sized mango in with the square cut ones.
 

I gave the tutorials on how I cut it for use for dehydration vs freezing... We froze $150 worth of mangos this week. They are $0.88 at Walmart. What a BLESSING the food bank has been in my life!

I hope you can read this. I have fallen asleep 20 times in the past hour as I try to finish this post. The hike and heat today really took it out of me. Hope the videos give enough details. I am too tired to do much else.    

Swollen Feet and Nightmare Day - Parasite Revenge

SEE THE OTHER POSTS AS I KNOW IT WASN'T FROM PERU NOW. I DID A REWRITE AND NOW I KNOW IT IS ACTUALLY AN INSECT PARASITE CALLED HORSEHAIR, NEMATOMORPHA OR GORDIAN WORM. IT IS SIMILAR TO HOOK WORM AND THREAD WORM. SEE MY OTHER POSTS FOR SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENT ETC. TYPE IN "PARASITE" OR "HORSEHAIR" INTO SEARCH BOX TO FIND THE OTHER POSTS.

For the past few days, I have been swollen and tired. I can't seem to get my feet to clear up. It have been on my feet dehydrating mangos most of the day. I have been running around trying to finish up some camp stuff. I am getting to bed anywhere from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. Once again it is 5 30 a.m. and I am dragging tired and am supposed to go hiking with the Jr. Leaders for camp in a few hours. It has been non stop trying to get stuff for camp done. I am falling asleep at the computer again.

I thought I would be able to get stuff done at the beginning of the week but with the Mango explosion from the food bank, dropping them off to neighbors and then drying and freezing my own, I wasn't able to do much.

By the end of the day three nights ago, my feet hurt so bad that it felt like my toes were going to explode. I cried as I had never experience that before. I think the parasite medication is taxing my system. My hair started falling out and now the feet being swollen thing. I won't be doing the hike for camp tomorrow. Perhaps I will be able to take a nap why they hike. I can't seem to stay awake again. Hope you are having a better day than I am.

It's a Mango kinda Day

It is 5:30 a.m, I have been working on dehydrating mango's for a few days. Trying to get them done but it is amazing how far the fruit goes. I thought they would perhaps fill both dehydrator trays but we froze a ton today and dehydrated lots and still have plenty to work on that front. I keep falling asleep again so I am going to say good night.

Modem MeltDown

Sorry that there was no actual post today. I am writing this the next day. I have been fighting horrible internet for some time. We have to unplug and replug in the modem and router all the time. We haven't been able to consistently do much of anything. It took me hours of calling my internet company. I finally got a wonderful worker named Matt who walked me through it and I was able to get my new modem working.

I wanted to share my blessing about that. A few months ago I went to help my neighbor fix his computer. While there, he gave me his old printer and modem. I had the exact modem he did so I didn't have to do much once I figured out that the modem was the problem. The internet light is supposed to be solid but the my old one was was flashing and I was grateful that I remembered that at some point so I could not have to trouble shoot anymore.

That was a blessing. It was funny that the girls turned on the radio and were talking about how difficult it was to go "old school" not having their favorite internet stations available. I am grateful for the internet and how blessed we are to have it available and to have Wi-Fi and all the blessings we do.

Living Life Anchored - Sweats Printed for Free

You know for girls camp this year our theme is "Live Life Anchored" and we are doing a boat / travel / ocean type theme. 

I wrote a post a month or so ago about finding a SUPER deal on sweats. I got them all for $3 each on clearance at Kmart. They have pockets and are double stitched seams and very good quality. All the girls, when trying them on, asked if they could keep them on as they were so comfortable. Here is a link to that post. 

Around the same time I purchased the sweats, the girls church leader told me her son bought a shop in town where they print shirts, do trophies etc. 
 
We were able to find a pattern we liked online, contact the owners of the patter / logo we liked and they sent us the design we could manipulate to the size we wanted. 

The designer at the printing shop gave us some options and we picked the one we liked best. We chose blue for the ink as it is "ocean" color and showed up well on the black sweat pants. 

After arriving home from being out of town for four days, I picked up the sweats and was THRILLED with how cute they came out. 

When I picked them up, the leader said her son donated the printing since we were doing it for church and her husband works there and helped with them.

For $3 plus tax and some elastic I had already and some sewing time for alterations, we got some sweet sweats for camp! Princess Four came home for a few weeks break from work and decide she is going to go to camp with us and wants a pair of sweats. I had to smile as I purchased a few extra for such an event. She actually has to come and drive Princess Five up as she will be missing the first day of camp due to being in the "Cinderella" community theater production that day.  

I have to be up there already so Princess Five needed a ride and it is WONDERFUL that Princess Four is going to take pictures of her in the play for me and then bring her up after. I am grateful they will be doing their first performance the night before camp so I can enjoy doing both events! 

Princess Four helped me fold and stack the sweats by name alphabetically and I have a few more to alter as we have a few new people coming as one just moved in and a friend may be coming so I have a ton to do and am adding altering those to the list. :-) 

I just wanted to share how grateful I am that I am so blessed to find amazing deals and just what I need for what I am doing at the time. I have so much going on that once again I don't get things posted and hope I can share all the blessings I am having in my life with you as I do believe that when we share our blessings with others, it strengthens us both!

A Helping "Hand"

This past month, we have had new neighbors move in. Princess Five wanted to make some suckers and I told some people who helped us that I would make them some as a "thank you" for their help. We made about four batches.
 
I shared a post in the past about these cute little sticky note hands I found. Click here for that post. I thought they were so cute for this as they gave us a helping "hand" so I thought that was cute. 

Then, with the new neighbors, we wrote, "Let us know if you need a "hand"." on the note. It was cute and since some of our sucker molds are hands saying the "I love you sign" I figured it was perfect for sharing.  

I know that the four people we gave bags to appreciated them and we got to share a large bag with one of Princess Five's good friends family who also just moved into town recently. 

Thought it was a cute idea that I would share.Have a great weekend. 

Song Books for Camp

Forgive this short post. I have been up all night working on these songbooks for camp as I have a busy schedule and need to get them done before camp.

I spent a LONG time on yesterdays post and actually should have made it two posts as there is so much in it. I haven't done this maybe a hand full of times in the many years I have been blogging but I need to head to see the infectious disease specialist in a few hours and still need to pack. I haven't been to bed yet and my friendly neighborhood parasites are in rare form tonight. I can feel them crawling in about six areas on my body as I type. My lungs are burning and even that spot on my back is burning.

Apparently, they don't like me holding hydrogen peroxide in my mouth for extended periods of time. Hope to share more with you after the weekend. I have lots going on this week. Hope you have a good one.

The Nightmare and Blessings of Horsehair, Nematomorpha, Gordian Worm - Strongyloides Stercoralis or Thread Worm Part 7

SEE THE OTHER POSTS AS I KNOW IT WASN'T FROM PERU NOW. I DID A REWRITE AND NOW I KNOW IT IS ACTUALLY AN INSECT PARASITE CALLED HORSEHAIR, NEMATOMORPHA OR GORDIAN WORM. IT IS SIMILAR TO HOOK WORM AND THREAD WORM. SEE MY OTHER POSTS FOR SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENT ETC. TYPE IN "PARASITE" OR "HORSEHAIR" INTO SEARCH BOX TO FIND THE OTHER POSTS.

I don't know if you noticed that I changed the title of this post and made it a little different than I have for the other parasite posts. I added the word "Blessings" in the title as I am learning that my being able to figure out that all the problems are related to parasites is a huge blessing. Over the past few months, I have spoken to so many neighbors, family, and friends about this and they all have symptoms! 

Sunday, I went to a welcome home meal for a friend returning from serving as a missionary. I have been having horrible problems with my eyes this past week. I shared that I woke in the night to a lightning bolt of light in my right eye last week. I now have a blind spot in that eye. 

Every day this week, I feel like someone is shooting little spit wads in front of my eyes going in all directions and sometimes I will actually see a little black thing moving fast. When I go outside, I can see hundreds of things moving fast all over my eyes and it makes me dizzy with all the motion. 

I actually thought I was going to faint on Sunday as I led the music at church and prayed I wouldn't make a scene. I actually fell going into my house after church and thought I broke my knee cap for a few seconds. It has been sore to move for days now. With that delay after church, I was late getting to the dinner for the missionary as I was bawling like a baby after falling being scared about my eyesight and general health wondering if I was going to end up blind, damaged lungs, and if I will ever get rid of these horrid things.

I gathered myself together and changed so I could help clean up and we arrived a bit late. We actually changed where we were going to sit a few times and some of our neighbors that have moved away came in just as the people across from us got up to go. They were walking past us to sit at another table and someone grabbed the husband and started talking so his wife said, "If he is going to talk, I'm just going to sit here." 

She mentioned something about seeing flashing things in the corner of her eyes. My ears perked up. Her husband was sitting by that point and said she had been to the eye Dr. and he said nothing was wrong but she sees thing moving in the sides of her eyes and has seen flashes of light. I asked if she "runs out of air when she sings?" and she said she does. I remembered that when I was helping them move, she mentioned her husband has had some chest / stomach problems and I thought to myself, "I wonder if he has the parasite so many seem to have." I asked about his pain and he said he went to the Dr about chest pain and they told him he was fine. I asked if it felt like someone heavy was sitting on his chest and he said it did. I asked if he had any rashes. He said he had one in his hair and the Dr. prescribed antibiotics but it didn't clear it up and he realized after a few months that it was cyclical. I asked about a dry cough and he said he does get those as well. 

I shared that I thought they had the thread worm parasite and he said he has horses and they get that and he uses his manure to fertilize his garden and guess who shares his produce with the neighborhood? Guess what parasites lives in the soil? He said he found that if he put rubbing alcohol on a cloth and put it on his rash they would move around his head and the rash would leave the spot where he put the alcohol. I shared that it won't kill them but if he uses the peroxide, it should clear it up lots and if he rubbed the animal invermectin and albendazole on it, along with the diatomaceous earth, it really should clear up but he needs to see a Dr. I also told him about how I soak my hands in the peroxide etc. 

Because of what his wife said about the eye problems, it just reinforced my belief that my eye problems are from the parasites. I figured I had better be seen in case my flash of light is a retinal detachment. I also wanted to know what was going on before I met with the specialist this week. 

I called the eye Dr and asked if they could fit me in due to he blind spot and flashing lights. They told me to come right over but warned I would have to wait awhile. I went and while waiting, I saw the cute idea of making a frame with chalk paint and stenciling the words, "Most likely to..." on the frame and then letting people write what they want and then holding it in front of their faces. I thought that would be a cute prom idea or wedding idea. 

I then got into the exam room and got my eyes dilated. I look like a demon off of "supernatural" as my eyes are so dilated in the one picture. In the one after in the car, it was weird that my eyes were dilated differently. Once was still wide open and the other closed more. 

While waiting in the exam room, I was saddened by thoughts of my friend Ruth and her husband that passed away, (See a post about that here) as it was her husbands practice. They still have his diploma and certificates on the wall and it brought many thoughts to my mind. The picture at the top is her husband examining one of my children. I can't help thinking that I probably didn't want to see that anyway and with my eyes dilated, everything was blurry but who wants to see things that remind them of loved-ones lost.   

I was happy to hear that my retina isn't detaching. I was saddened to see that my eyesight has deteriorated significantly. I have never needed glasses except while pregnant in nursing school. Other than that time, I haven't ever worn them. Until two months or so ago, I could see very clearly. Now, one eye was 20/70 and the other was 20/50 and even though I could "read" what was there, I couldn't see it clearly. Lately, I will have to ask my kids to read things to me at the house. 

The Dr. found that my vitreous is detaching and pulling in places and that is what has caused my "blind" spot and also caused the flashing lightning bolt that woke me. I had to cringe when he said, "You have threads floating around in the vitreous fluid" and explained that they may calm and get better over time and attributed it to age. I KNOW that those "threads" are parasites. I am so frustrated that no Dr.'s in our area seem to understand this parasite. I shared with him that if anyone else comes in with this similar eye problem, to please ask them if "they have bumps in the back of their throat" or "run out of air when they sing" to find out if there is a common problem and this is a problem for more than just my old neighbor and I. He said he would and I need to go back in a few months to make sure it isn't progressing further. 

I arrived home somewhat relieved but somewhat sad that I will have a blind spot for the rest of my life and it may get worse. There isn't anything they can do as if they mess with it, it can cause retinal detachment.So, I was stressed about this and figuring how many people are suffering from these type of problems and another friend of mine just came to mind. She told me she has the symptoms of running out of air etc and I just remembered that she was diagnosed with "macular degeneration" a few years back. I wonder if the parasites had something to do with that problem she has.  

I made some calls to find keys for the copy room at church as I am working on a songbook for girls camp and needed to go make some copies. My neighbor across the street had a key to the copy room at church so I walked out to go get the key from her and was stressing about my eyes and I look up as I come out of the garage and there is a HUGE, bright rainbow in front of me. I KNOW God was telling me it was OK. I wish I had gone in for my good camera but took these with my phone and the camera on my phone isn't the best as you can see by these pictures. I stared across the street and noticed a second small rainbow. 

A double rainbow. It took me back to my last court date when I was moving Princess Three to college the same day and I walked out to a double rainbow in nearly the same spot. (Click here for that post.) If they were behind the house, I wouldn't have seen them. They were right in front of me both times and both times, I was stressed and worried about life and my future. He is so good to reassure me that all will be "OK."

I was returning my neighbors key and she invited me in. It was almost ten and she was ready for bed but I felt like I should tell her about the parasites. Guess who has a high white blood cell count and is going to the Dr tomorrow for further testing???? YES!!! Can you believe it? I called three other people for a key to that room before calling her and not one answered their cell phone. I actually ran into one of them at the eye Dr. and forgot to ask her about the key. I am SURE I was supposed to tell her about the parasites as she has bumps in the back of  her throat and a high white count and she said she was going to try the hand soak thing. 

I don't know that the hand is the best place for everyone as they may not have them in their hands but more local to another area. The scalp and backside are more common for the rash as well as the back of the hand. Princess Five has some rashes on her feet but I had forgotten that and had assumed it was athletes foot from one of the camps she attended or something but now, I am going to soak her feet and see what shows up. She is always walking barefoot in the yard and my guess is we will have something show up after soaking. 

I wanted to share that as the parasite load in my body increases, so has my weight. Each month I have gone to the Dr, the past three months, I have gained 2-5 lbs a month. I eat one larger healthy meal a day and then yogurt, and banana once a day and some granola or grain crackers. That is it most days. It seems that the more parasites you have, the larger you get.

This is a blessing in a way as I know that if I can figure it out, it will bless many people in my town, state and who knows where else. Just coming up with the peroxide soak alone will help diagnose many. I thought a few weeks back that perhaps I could patent some of the ideas for testing and treatments and make some money but my Heavenly Father let me know this week that I need to give all the information I have out freely as he gave it to me freely. I will be posting some other things that I have come up with on diagnosis testing and some treatment things I have been trying to help speed up the process and pray that we will be able to come up with some cure for this awful little parasite that at the moment is moving around near my heart causing burning and others are crawling around my diaphram area litterally "creeping me out." so with this long post, I want to share one last blessing. 

I was stressing out the other day while driving as my mother isn't doing well and I need to schedule some time to head up and do our annual closet and apartment clean out for her upcoming birthday. (See a post about that here and here.) I stopped at a intersection while trying to figure out how to do this in my mind and I looked down to see this rather scratched penny just outside my door. No one was behind me so I picked it up. It did help me realize that I need to visit my mom but not to stress about it and trust God to help me figure it out. On the way into the mission dinner on Sunday after my little fall and melt down, I was sharing the story about my penny find as we left the car and were walking to the building. I didn't get halfway through my story of finding the penny when I look down and find this dime! It was right after falling and stressing about fainting and going blind etc. GOD is telling me it will be OK and that I need to TRUST in HIM! I wish I didn't need so many reminders. ha ha.

In the end, I am sure this parasite nightmare will bless many lives including those of my family and friends. I KNOW I had to have the super infection so I could document symptoms from every area. Before, I only had lung and thyroid issues with a few bumps in the throat. If I hadn't gotten the massive infection, I wouldn't have probably figured it out. The white blood count would have continiued to increase and I am sure I would end up with the Leukemia diagnosis my mother has and be on oxygen 24/7 like she is. So, really, this is a blessing to me as well if I can figure out a way to stop the progression and heal what can be healed. 

So from now on, I hope I can always look at this like a blessing and focus on that rather than the nightmare of it all! I hope we can all TRUST in Him in all we do.