"If money can fix it, it's not a problem." - Tom Magliozzi

This was my first day back to the gym in a week. Uff-dah.

Pam's job situation continues to develop. Last week she got news that her hours at the hospital have been restructured again, and that she'll drop from 80 hours per pay period (two weeks) to 60. That's supposed to last through the summer slump, but snow birds usually don't return in significant numbers, and the census doesn't rise, until late September.

She had applied for a job at the Banner hospice facility next to the hospital, and that was at the top of her list of preferred positions. She learned a couple of weeks ago that she didn't get the position. I think they were too far into the process of filling it before she even applied because she never got called in for an interview. Today she got an email from the director of all the area hospice units within the Banner system telling her about a similar opening at another hospice facility that turns out to be about 3 miles from our house. The email encouraged her to apply and the HR guy who's been helping Pam got cc'd.
Guess what we're hoping and praying for!

I really like that quote up there. Tom is one of the two brothers who host the NPR show "Car Talk," a favorite at our house (yes, Pam too).
If all it takes is money there should be no problem getting it "fixed." Our problem is not insufficient funds; it's priorities, consensus, administration....
The problem is people.

Pathway supports Geoff & Shannon Husa, missionaries under New Tribes Mission (NTM) working with a very remote tribe in Papua New Guinea (PNG) known as the Mibu. I've mentioned them here before and commented on their dedication. Their village is so remote that the only way in/out is by helicopter and they are the only "white" people there. As of a couple of months ago NTM lost airplane support to/from PNG. So in the case of a medical emergency the copter could get one of the Husas, or other missionaries serving in similar situations, out of their village and into one of a handful of cities in PNG, but not off the island to Australia where there's a decent hospital. The solution was a new plane, a craft manufactured by Kodiak and especially well suited to the kind of use it would see in PNG - short runways, rapid ascent/descent, sizable cargo loads...
Cost: $2.2 million.

Pathway did what this pastor thinks was an outstanding job at responding to that need, but our size meant what we sent to NTM was a small amount relative to the total cost. Last month we heard that two business men in Denver decided to make up the difference between what churches like ours had given toward the plane and the total amount needed, and that figure was about $1.8 million. As a result, the plane should be in service by the end of the year.

The problem is not money. Which means "fixing it" can happen in beautiful ways.

112 degrees this afternoon. That's hot.