Wednesday November 7, 2007

A Busy Day

Most of my day on Tuesday was spent working on a 13,999 piece mailing that I am preparing for the post office truck to pick up at noon on Thursday.  When I am finished there will be 100 mail trays filled with The Extra Mile newsletters.  By 5:00 p.m. I had 60 trays finished (printing addresses on the newsletter and tabbing them closed).  I am grateful for machines that do this work very quickly.

A Delightful Evening

Cerwin, Bette, Nelson, and Cerwin’s Mother

Our friends Nelson and Bette Denlinger (from Mesa, AZ) are in the area for several weeks due the death of his dad.  Nelson and Cerwin were best friends as boys, partially due to the fact that their parents were best friends.

Forty-four years ago we were disappointed that we could not attend each others wedding – because we had chosen the same day!  Now we have fun celebrating the same anniversary in September. 

We were in Quebec when Mark died, so were not able to attend the funeral.  That is the reason we made plans to spend time with them.

Both are living miracles.  Bette had cancer in her neck and nose area and was given three years to live.  Eleven years later she is cancer free!  Two years after cancer was discovered in her body, and she was recovering from treatment, Nelson fell off a ladder while trimming a palm tree in their yard.  His lower body was crushed, and he spent seven weeks in a coma.  They told Bette that he would never walk.

Nelson said they never told him that – so he walked! 

His lower body is held together with a lot of “hardware”, and he deals with continual pain, but both are fun to visit and quite positive. 

They spend a lot of their time involved with SPOHNC, helping to raise awareness of oral, head, and neck cancer – www.spohnc.org.