Arriving in the US

-

We travelled from Athens at 6:30 a.m. and arrived in San Francisco at 1 p.m. the same day.  Amazing!  We were very excited!  My brother and sister-in-law had come to the airport to pick us up and were waiting in a cellphone waiting parking lot--where you can wait until the passenger calls to say they are there.

 
We got our phone at to call and it was dead.  So we had to get the power back-up out of the luggage and charge the phone and then turn it on to find out there was no roaming in SF from our Zimbabwe phone!  So I ran to a pay phone to call and you need 2 quarters!  I had one but no other change because in Zimbabwe even though we are in US $ we don't use US change.  I tried to call collect and cellphones can't except collect calls!!  Now it is 45 minutes later and we are trying to figure out what to do!!  Then we finally found a place selling US sim cards for $90 and we got that and 3 months free calls--so we were finally able to call them and they came to pick us!  Wow--welcome to America!


That night we had dinner with my brother, sister, nephew and his wife and 2 kids, and my Zimbabwe sister Sylvia.  The weather was warm in the mid-90's when we arrived so we liked that.


Thursday morning my forwarding agent Sue came by and took us shopping for the day--and we shopped!  She took us to lunch and we had a wonderful time.


The next day we did more shopping and had Family Game night at my nephew's new house.  They moved to a new house 2 months ago so we got a chance to see the new house.  Then there were 12 of us to play games.


On Saturday we left for Sacramento about 100 miles away and we stayed with Rose and Bob Coibion. Our great friends who have been to Chidamoyo several times.  We had a wonderful time with them and enjoyed swimming in their pool.


Sunday morning we were at Adventure Church of Natomos and enjoyed meeting many old friends and supporters.  We had lunch with their team that came last year to visit us at Chidamoyo and the mission team.  Major got a First Aid kit that had a case of Snicker bars in it for him!  He loved that First Aid!


We came home on Monday and have been busy seeing friends and shopping!  Yesterday we went to Sebastopol to participate in the telemedicine project that Rotary is doing.  We met with fellow participants from DRC and Nigeria and talked about our experiences.  We leave tomorrow for 3 1/2 weeks away as we leave for our weekend in Wichita, Kansas.


Keep praying for the hospital.  They have been very busy!  Pray for us as we travel.  I came down with a bad cold the second day we were here--which has now moved down to a cough, but slowly I am feeling better.  Hope to see you somewhere on the way!

 We flew over the Alps on our way home

 Great nephews Alec and Maximo with Sylvia's son Mapi

Major swimming



 Major and Kathy with the minister from Adventure-Scott Matthews

Brandon, Linda and Else--our group who visited us in 2014


Major's First Aid Kit--Snicker Bars



 Bob and Rose Coibion with Major

Rotary session with Dr. Jim Gude leading



Comments

  1. Manish BatraSeptember 15, 2015 at 1:23 AM

    Hey, very nice site. I came across this on Google, and I am stoked that I did. I will definitely be coming back here more often. Wish I could add to the conversation and bring a bit more to the table, but am just taking in as much info as I can at the moment. Thanks for sharing.
    Golden Motor Wheelchair

    Keep Posting:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Manish BatraOctober 15, 2015 at 2:05 AM

    Hey, very nice site. I came across this on Google, and I am stoked that I did. I will definitely be coming back here more often. Wish I could add to the conversation and bring a bit more to the table, but am just taking in as much info as I can at the moment. Thanks for sharing.
    Karma Km 2500 Wheelchair

    Keep Posting:)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unpacking cintainer, interviewing a new doctor

-
Image
It has been busy this week unpacking the container that arrived recently.  We have been unloading it a truck load at a time and bringing it up to the hospital to unload.  Carolyn Mereki has been helping to unload and sort and then she delivers it to the different departments. We are really happy with a lot of good supplies that we are unpacking to use at the hospital. We are putting the barrels and boxes in the hallway outside my office and opening them when we have time.  It is always fun to see what we get! On Friday this week we traveled to Kadoma (1 hour south of Harare), about 4 1/2 hour drive for us.  We met up with Mashoko administration to interview 6 people for jobs at Chidamoyo and Mashoko as doctors.  We have tentatively made decisions, but have another 2 people to interview--so please pray with us that we choose the right doctor. The doctor strike continues since 1 March.  No settlement and government hospitals only doing emergencies so we can't really refer o
Read more
-
Image
 I stopped chemo in mid-February and the oncologist tried a period of Immunotherapy by itself to see if it would work.  In March I started to produce a lot of abdominal fluid (ascities) and had to go to the hospital every 2 weeks and then every week to be tapped to remove the fluid.  They got off up to 8.8 liters a time which gave me a few days relief before it would come back.  It made it hard to breathe without laying on my sides and I couldn't really eat without pain. So, I was in bed a lot of the time. They decided I needed to start Chemo again with the Immunotherapy.  My Oncologist said it was not time to give up yet!  He said the chemo helped before to shrink the tumor a bit so they felt if I could shrink it again I wouldn't have to go for tapping.  I was all for that. He did remind me there is no cure only remission and that I have months not years to live but he felt there were other drugs to try if these don't work.  I am usually not in pain so I am so thankful for
Read more

Happy Boxing Day

-
Image
Our Christmas dinner theme was Hawaiian Retro Christmas--so we had dress 1950's Hawaii. Michael, Major's son decided to add some tummy to his costume to look like his Dad! Enjoy these pictures!
Read more