"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." - Thomas Paine

Very odd day. 

Michelle's brother Craig, battling with the effects of surgery he had for pancreatic cancer, had what must be about the fifth follow-up surgery this afternoon. His situation is extremely critical.

My Michigan daughter (who now lives in Ohio) learned her mom's cancer has returned and that the outlook isn't good. 

The C word is one of the worst in the English language.

I spent my time at the coffee shop focusing on my trip to Tanzania the beginning of April. It's tricky because I'm sharing the teaching of the 16 sessions with another pastor, the father of one of the missionaries out there, who lives and has a church in Ohio. We'll meet up in Dar es Salaam and travel together to the far side of TZ for this conference. Coordinating who covers what topics in which sessions, and doing that via email, is clumsy. 

Once the fog burned off at about 10 a.m. the rest of the day was bright and sunny. I'd forgotten just how pretty this place is when the sun comes in through the big Douglas Fir trees. It's still way too muddy down by the coop for me to level the dirt and spread the grass seed, but maybe by tomorrow afternoon it will have dried out enough.

Among the dozens of tasks I tackled today was removing the old wiring from the outside of Fred. At some point in the past it had electrical service, with a now-missing meter and electrical panel on the west side. I'd already cut out all the interior wiring, so today I removed that panel's guts and all the wiring that it contained.

I'm not an electrician, but I don't think masking tape is an approved wrap for electrical connections. 

I'm working on getting the rest of my tools and equipment organized. Some of it has been stored in the coop, but we'll need that in just a few weeks for the chickens. I put up shelves in the woodshed storage bay to hold my power tools, and in the process of opening up those boxes I came across my collection of license plates. They now grace the front of Barnette, each telling the story of a vehicle from the past decade or so.

Speaking of vehicles, Facebook (for those of you not familiar with that time-waster) sometimes

shows you posts from "this date X years ago" to remind you of what you posted back then and give you the opportunity to put it back up. Here's what I posted two years ago today. Just brought it home.

One of the reasons for my work to organize things is so I can get the truck into Barnette. With the new axles and radiator installed I can finish up the sorting so it's drivable. But that needs to happen inside Barnette if I'm going to work on it more than one day in 14 during this very rainy rainy season.

So I spent the day working on TZ prep and doing a dozen projects around here. But here I am at the end of the day thinking about two people with cancer and their families, both facing very difficult times.