Good Friends, Good Food.

As I plug along during this month of Trauma training, I pretty much have two days in the middle of the week off, having worked most of the weekend. It turns out that people hurt themselves a lot over the weekend, so it winds up being a good time to learn about Trauma. When I'm not hanging out with my girls, I try to sneak in some extracurricular procedural training. I can't really elaborate on that here, though.

Yesterday, April and I cooked our first turkey. We pretty much had no idea what we were doing. But, sticking with my theory that lots of butter (or cheese, but usually not together) makes anything better, I pulled up the skin of the turkey (blunt dissection for you medical types) and put a nice layer of butter between the skin and the meat. Add herbs, cook for a few hours, and presto- a tasty Thanksgiving bird. Living together, almost communally, is wonderful- especially at times like these. During our Thanksgiving meal last night we all packed into our friends' kitchen and ate a thanksgiving feast. The food was delicious, though it was the love between friends, the beauty of the children around us, and the goodness of our Saviour that made the time truly rich.

Most of us present for dinner had just come home from the Global Missions Health Conference. This year's conference was absolutely superb. We learned much and connected with many missionaries and missions organizations with which we needed contact. We came home changed people. I'm not exaggerating. As I mentioned in the last post, I had the chance to sit and listen to John Patrick, who has been very influential in the way I see the world and the problems we currently have in our churches and in society. A brilliant biochemist and pediatrician, he spent much of his career treating malnourished children in Jamaica and Africa. Dr. Patrick is fun to listen to and everything he has to say smacks of a salt and light in a way that is lacking in much of our culture, especially in academia. He has the ability to tear the liberal, post modern world view to shreds and does so with humor and candor. His lectures make you think and even make my head hurt a little. I think in that respect, the American church could stand to have a few headaches. He has a website of his own, which has some excellent MP3s and papers. it can be found at:

www.johnpatrick.ca

additionally, he has a college- which I would have liked to experience myself, had it existed before I entered University. Maybe I'll be able to check out one of his week long courses at some point. This is a little bit prettier of a website than the former website.

http://www.augustinecollege.org

In other news, Abigail is becoming quite the little lady. She's now getting into wearing dress up jewelry and putting on (make believe) make up, as you can see in the video