Kansas City Winter Update
It’s been a
busy two months since my last update. The main event, of course, is the health of my twin brother, Jim. You may recall
in my last update he has kidney failure. After many doctor’s visits and blood
transfusions and out-patient surgeries and blood tests and epogen shots and
bone marrow testing and lack of sleep he started dialysis 5 weeks ago. Thank
God he is now starting to get some energy back. Today was a big day because he
was able to drive himself to and from the dialysis clinic for the first time. I
have been living with him and driving him for the first three weeks to each
session, three days a week.
On Feb 1 I flew to Miami FL to visit my
friend Rose for 12 days, as I have done the last several years. We had a great
time. Rose and I met at Maryknoll and attended language school together in
Tanzania 8 years ago. Rose was raised in Miami so she really knows the restaurants
well there. She took two weeks of vacation from Camillus for my visit. The Caribbean
food options are wonderful but so is just about everything else we tried liked
Peruvian and Irish, Italian and Mexican. The timing of this trip could not have
been better as the weather in Kansas went from bad to worse while the Miami weather
stayed around 80F every day. We got in a picnic while listening to blue grass
bands in the park. We got in a couple rounds of golf at a nice little public
course. Rose rented me a Harley so I could ride with her friend the Archbishop
on his 2nd annual Poker Run with 125 other bikers for fund raising. We
spent a day driving down to beautiful Key West and touring that area. I got a tour
of the new Camillus House for the homeless and we then attended a lecture there
by one of my favorite religious speakers, Fr Lawrence Freeman from the UK on
meditation and addiction. We talked by phone with our old Maryknoll classmate,
Jason Oberfeld, as he was passing through Miami airport on his way back to
Bolivia. We had a nice Superbowl party at Rose’s house. We attended a
celebration at St Thomas University one evening. I spent some time with Rose’s
brother Tim on their grandmother’s water well. I also spent a few hours putting
her financial data into Turbotax, as I did last year. I toured the Barry
University campus while Rose was teaching nursing classes one afternoon and got
information on enrolling African students. Maybe most enjoyable was seeing Rose’s
many good friends again, like the archbishop. And I even met a few new ones
like her old classmate from Houston who came in one weekend on nursing
business. We also talked about maybe visiting her friends in Haiti or Cuba next
year, God willing. She has done several medical mission trips to Haiti and one
trip to see the pope in Cuba.
I just
signed up for a Lenten course on the mystics with Sr Teresa at Guardian Angel
parish where my contemplative group meets each Tuesday morning. That starts
right after I get back from my son Kyle’s wedding in the Houston area on March
1. Kyle and his future wife, Chrystal, moved to Atlanta in mid January to start
his new job with eVestment, so they will be arriving about the same time I do.
His uncle Phillip will be riding with me and will be presiding at the marriage
service at a local yacht club. It should be fun. Of course, it will be great to
see the grandkids again and hear how my son, Adam’s, new job is going in
Pearland, just down the road. 
