Between Iraq and a Fireplace

Good morning from sunny Irbil, Iraq. You know you're not in Kansas anymore when your flight from Jordan to Iraq leaves at 1:00AM, the man taking your boarding pass is busy puffing on a cigarette as he tears your ticket stub, and you arrive at 3:00 AM with the temperature at a balmy 95 degrees. At least the dead grass here reminds me of home and my own front yard. One other interesting travel note - I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing, but people on our flights seemed to have very little interest in locking the door when they went to the restroom, which led to some spectacularly awkward encounters and priceless facial expressions.

With the flying out of the way, we've got a full week of teaching sessions scheduled with the Kurdzman church, and later on in the week we'll be distributing Bibles, shoes, and Story of Jesus booklets to children at the local schools. All is going well so far, and I'm blessed to be traveling with such experienced older brothers in Christ.

Well, it's 8:00 AM now and I'm going to get a few z's in before things get going this afternoon. I'll let you know of any other amusing intercultural exchanges that take place. Please keep Adrienne and the Benjamite in your prayers these next two weeks.

Baby Circles

Today we're home a day early and happy to be sleeping in our own beds this evening. Unfortunately, we're home early because Ben wasn't able to breathe well through the new trach so they put the old one back in this morning and sent us on our way. This leaves us back at the same point we were at back in March with the decision on whether to use the laser to remove part of Ben's vocal cord, widen Ben's airway by grafting some rib cartilage into the cartilage ring around his voice box, or just wait and see what happens.

The doctor said that he has recently started using Botox on patients who need a cartilage graft so that the muscles won't compress the cartilage that is being inserted. I always thought I still had a few more years before I had to give the Botoxing talk to my son.

In other news, we celebrated 7 years of marriage last week by bypassing Bartlesville and heading on up to Kansas City for the weekend. Since the name Kansas comes from an Indian word which means "Free Art Museums", our photos will center around this theme.

This picture combines two things I hate - giant spiders and staged photographs that take way too long to set up. (I believe this was take four).


Yes, those really are 20-foot-tall shuttlecocks that you see in the distance.


And my new favorite sculpture - it's kinda like Thinking Man meets Salvador Dali.


One other interesting bit of news - it's time for World Compassion's periodic trip to check up on our overseas projects. Our media guy is not able to go this time so at the end of the month I'll be off on a two week trip to film the work that our ministry supports in northern Iraq and Afghanistan. God has blessed me with this fantastic opportunity so please pray that all goes well and that time flies for Adrienne and Ben while I'm gone.

Phoenix

Like a phoenix rising up from the ashes only to be blown out of the sky by an Okie duck hunter was my return to playing indoor soccer goalie after two years of retirement. Things can only get better after the 12-2 thrashing we received tonight. Hopefully, my return to blogging will go a little more smoothly.

There's a lot of ground to cover here so we'll use some pictures to help things along. Over the last 2 months there have been good times...


and bad times...


We've played in the legendary mole hills of Bixby. It's "Don't make a mole hill out of a mountain" around here.


We've inaugurated the tricycle era.


And for Father's Day, I received the first ever painting on canvas by the Shirtless Picasso (note the trademark blue ear). I believe he's calling this one "Something to Do Before 2nd Breakfast."


But mostly, Benjamin has been spending time with his two true loves - books...

...And his girlfriends.


As you'll see, the two seem to go together.

Sara Hill came over to our place and read some books for Ben. He was mildly excited about this.

And now you know the way to Benjamin's heart.

I think that pretty much sums it up. Ben hasn't had any surgeries for the past 6 weeks which has been very nice. His next one is coming up on August 5th, and it's a big one. The surgeon will be taking out Ben's trach and putting in a new one that will allow Ben to attempt to breathe through his nose and mouth. Before he switches out the trach, he'll go in and repair the damage that was done to Ben's airway when they put the first trach in. This means that everything above and below Ben's vocal cords should be pretty close to normal after the procedure, and putting this new trach in will let us see how much work the doctor still has to do to open up the airway between the cords. We'll be staying in the ICU at OU Children's Hospital in OKC on the first night after the surgery, and we're hoping he can go home on the 7th.

It's good to be back with y'all again, and thanks as always for praying for Benjamin.

Dictionary

During this graduation season, I've heard many parents say that time has gone by so fast. I'm hoping the next few months go by in slow-mo; this has been a really fun age. Here's a taste of it.




Benjamin goes in to see Dr. Digoy again on Thursday. It's just a bronchoscopy, but we're hoping he'll see plenty of progress.

Sign of the Times

Every time Benjamin has to go in for surgery or a bronchoscopy, we always have to starve him for several hours before he is put under anesthesia. Now that he's a bit older he's starting to learn how to put his sign language to good use. After an hour in the waiting room this morning, Ben had enough and began pulling out all the stops in order to get a little food. Since his signs were falling on the blind eyes of his parents, he began to work on the nurses in the room. By the time he had finished his routine of squeezing his fingers together and rubbing his chest to say "milk pleeeease" followed by his most pathetic frowny face and a few tears down the cheek, the nurses had melted into puddles on the floor. I'm pretty sure if Adrienne and I were not in the room, Ben would've had himself some milk and a steak dinner if he knew the sign for it.

Once they finally knocked Ben out, Dr. Digoy was able to see some good progress with Ben's vocal cords. One side of Ben's airway had opened up so well, that the doctor decided to use a laser to clear out the last little bit of tissue that was blocking that area. There's still a considerable blockage on the other side of Ben's airway around the vocal cords, but Dr. Digoy is now hopeful that this blockage may also recede like the other tissue did.

He told us that he did not feel comfortable doing the surgery that Ben was originally scheduled for because he had done several similar procedures on other kids in recent weeks and was not satisfied with the results. The surgery is pretty painful, and he didn't think it would open up Ben's airway wide enough for him to take out the trach. So we'll probably head down to OKC again in two or three weeks to see how Ben has progressed and figure out what's next.

Thank you all as always for your prayers and thoughtfulness,
Whit, Adrienne, and the Benjamite