Around 200 years ago, people were dying of "wurstgift" in Germany - sausage poisoning - without really understanding why. Don't you just love the German language? It really was the worst gift; it was botulism. Scientists started studying it and finding uses for it in the nineteenth century that led to the multitude of treatments available now. The most well known use is the cosmetic treatment for wrinkles. A less well known use is to treat muscle spasms. [...]

Thanksgiving is a very North American holiday. The BFA community celebrates it for a month - first Canadian Thanksgiving, a couple weeks later dorm Thanksgiving, and this past week was full of American Thanksgiving celebrations. We don't get any official days off, but the English speakers get together and eat lots of food. Last weekend, I celebrated American Thanksgiving with my family group as we all gathered and ate and even shared some thoughts on giving thanks. We all wrote down five things we were thankful for this year and five things that we'd struggled with this year. It wasn't hard for several people to connect that many things on the struggle side had directly led to the things on the thankful side. [...]

I had an idea of what I was going to write about yesterday, but everything changed the minute I looked at my Facebook today. I first saw a notification that someone I know was "marked safe during Paris Terror Attacks." The rest of my news feed was primarily made up of comments about the attacks and people across the world praying for the city. Everything changed in that minute.[...]

Sometimes I worry that people are getting tired of my recovery story, but then I have the kind of outpouring of positive responses like last week that remind me there are still hundreds of people encouraging me and praying for me. Thank you.[...]

Urology is the branch of medicine that deals with the urinary system. With that information, you may now make an educated decision about whether or not you want to read the rest of this post.[...]

I forgot to write a post this weekend; I have no excuse. I try to have some measure of routine in my weeks where I remember to give an update for everyone praying for me, and yet that sense of regularity or normalcy evades me. This elusive concept of normal sounds appealing, but it also sounds a little boring, if we're being completely honest (which I try to be).[...]

I'm late writing this week's update because I spent a lot of time learning about volunteering with refugees and then helping friends lead a church service for refugees living nearby. What a privilege to serve. I was asked to lead songs with the children, and I had the absolute delight of teaching twenty kids the motions to one of my favorite songs - "Jesus Soccer Star." I watched them dance along with smiles on their faces, and each one lit up when I pointed to them during the "I just came here to love you" line. As refugees in Germany, very few of these kids speak English, though, so they had no idea what the song was about. One of the twenty was fluent in English, and about half understood German. We translated the basic concept into German and the kids who only knew Arabic danced anyways (the kid who spoke French sat in the corner with his arms crossed).[...]

I love to laugh.

I understand suffering.[...]

I was really excited last week to sit down and type out the wonders of my return to Frauenchor last Monday night, but I fell sick on Thursday and was taking it easy all weekend long. I missed my second week at the local women's choir this past Monday, but I can't tell you how excited I am for my old German neighbor to pick me up this week and help me up the stairs where I'll sing in a room of women who have a different mother tongue than I do but welcomed me into their club nonetheless. [...]

First of all, thank you to everyone who messaged me or commented on my last post. I'm grateful for your kind words. I've had a great week full of affirmation and positive physical exertion.[...]