Calgary Release Concert!

Hi everyone! We had a great time at Foothills! The gym was packed with friends and family! There was great food, lovely decorations, and hopefully some good music too! I find it way more nerve wracking singing in front of people I know, so tonight I think I hit the top in terms of nerves and stress...sorry Darryl and Jonny. But people seemed to enjoy themselves. On a couple of tunes we had Megan Enns, Heather Schellenberg, Rachel Braul and Jesse Thiessen join us. They, plus another 5 or 6 people, are on the cd on two tracks...The House and With My Own Two Hands. It was great fun to have them with us tonight!

Joseph called us today. It was so good to visit with him again. When he called he was having a late supper with Elizabeth and her family. After exchanging greetings, he told us about his week. The budget for the AIDS program in Najile is spent. They have no money to take on more patients, particularly those in the second stage of AIDS, who require more intensive care and treatment. So, on Joseph's regular rounds of walking and visiting clients, he was told about a man who was abandoned by his family because he had AIDS, and was living, suffering, on his own. Joseph decided to check in on him. Tepipe was very ill, and needed immediate treatment. Joseph spent much of the week with him, caring for him, getting home most nights long after midnight. He managed to take him to Nairobi on Friday. After being turned away at one hospital because of the cost of treatment, Joseph found a public hospital that was willing to give Tepipe a blood transfusion. Joseph will go to Nairobi tomorrow to visit him. I told him that the work he is doing is so good, so important, and hard. He said to me that God calls us to serve, but sometimes serving can be very complicated and difficult. The barriers that Joseph and the GAR staff and clients face are huge. Today Joseph challenged, moved, and inspired us again to do what we can to continue to raise awareness and money to support not only his work in Najile, but MCC partners worldwide who are involved in such critical work with AIDS. Humbling.