Family Events

The health miracles continue with me. Since our last newsletter in June, my health has continued to steadily improve. The two months of very busy activity in Germany this past summer didn't hurt me health wise. To the contrary, they seemed to help. I have continued loosing weight and now am down to a monthly average of around 220 pounds -- down from the 252 average this time last year. The average blood sugar is now around 115, while the blood pressure typically is around 118 over 76 with a heart rate of 72. The periodic checkups with doctors so far this fall have netted very positive reports. I still have several more to go in November as we prepare for the move to Wesseling Germany in December. Again I give the human credit to Dr. Bonar, my endocrinologist in Gastonia, and the Byetta diabetes medicine.	Claire's health, on the other hand, has not been so good this fall. Most of it is due to the huge stress that she is experiencing this fall with her work as an elementary school librarian. Policy changes in the school, in the district, and throughout the North Carolina public schools have pretty much evaporated any sense of job satisfaction and feeling of meaningful contribution to the education of children. Consequently, she is having trouble walking, among several things. The eye doctor decided to go ahead with cataract surgery in her right eye since we're getting ready to move out of the country. This was done on Wednesday, Oct. 22, and was very successful. For that we're very grateful. All this has made her even more anxious to retire from teaching and get moved to Germany ASAP. There we intend to live a much more relaxed and less stressful pace of living. Two items will be our primary focus: 1) helping the church and 2) expanding our photography activities.
	Our limited experience in living in a German lifestyle for two months this summer opened up the anticipation that retirement life in our apartment in Wesseling could extend our life many years and make the quality of that living much, much healthier and more enjoyable. The absolute chaos of August through October in trying to sell our home and belongings here have made us all the more anxious to get situated in Europe permanently. With a similar cost-of-living to here in NC, an enormously better but much less expensive health care system, and a much slower pace of living, we are anxious to escape the American rat-race kind of living for a higher quality of living in Germany. God graciously allowed us this summer to set up house in a lovely apartment in Wesseling, a small town of 12,000 people located between Cologne and Bonn. For us it's a wonderful location; we like living in small towns, but it's close to Cologne (1 million plus) and Bonn (1/2 million plus). The fun in decorating and furnishing it as we like is something we eagerly look forward to.

The health miracles continue with me. Since our last newsletter in June, my health has continued to steadily improve. The two months of very busy activity in Germany this past summer didn't hurt me health wise. To the contrary, they seemed to help. I have continued loosing weight and now am down to a monthly average of around 220 pounds -- down from the 252 average this time last year. The average blood sugar is now around 115, while the blood pressure typically is around 118 over 76 with a heart rate of 72. The periodic checkups with doctors so far this fall have netted very positive reports. I still have several more to go in November as we prepare for the move to Wesseling Germany in December. Again I give the human credit to Dr. Bonar, my endocrinologist in Gastonia, and the Byetta diabetes medicine.

Claire's health, on the other hand, has not been so good this fall. Most of it is due to the huge stress that she is experiencing this fall with her work as an elementary school librarian. Policy changes in the school, in the district, and throughout the North Carolina public schools have pretty much evaporated any sense of job satisfaction and feeling of meaningful contribution to the education of children. Consequently, she is having trouble walking, among several things. The eye doctor decided to go ahead with cataract surgery in her right eye since we're getting ready to move out of the country. This was done on Wednesday, Oct. 22, and was very successful. For that we're very grateful. All this has made her even more anxious to retire from teaching and get moved to Germany ASAP. There we intend to live a much more relaxed and less stressful pace of living. Two items will be our primary focus: 1) helping the church and 2) expanding our photography activities.

Our limited experience in living in a German lifestyle for two months this summer opened up the anticipation that retirement life in our apartment in Wesseling could extend our life many years and make the quality of that living much, much healthier and more enjoyable. The absolute chaos of August through October in trying to sell our home and belongings here have made us all the more anxious to get situated in Europe permanently. With a similar cost-of-living to here in NC, an enormously better but much less expensive health care system, and a much slower pace of living, we are anxious to escape the American rat-race kind of living for a higher quality of living in Germany. God graciously allowed us this summer to set up house in a lovely apartment in Wesseling, a small town of 12,000 people located between Cologne and Bonn. For us it's a wonderful location; we like living in small towns, but it's close to Cologne (1 million plus) and Bonn (1/2 million plus). The fun in decorating and furnishing it as we like is something we eagerly look forward to.

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