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It feels like twenty years since I was last here...

On November 29, about 10:30 pm, in Dasmarinas, Cavite, I was crossing the highway from where I was living there to the 7-Eleven on the other side. A big truck came by and that was the last thing I remembered. No, I wasn't hit but I had a minor diabetic stroke. For the next three weeks, I did nothing but sleep for 16-20 hours a day. Mind you, I didn't have high blood pressure (which the Filipinos call simply "high blood") this was a tension stroke.

After my in-house recuperation, I took the ship down to Mindanao, where I stayed with a widow whom I had been wanting to know for many months. A widow with two children, I hit it off immediately with her family. I was not allowed to go back to work for two months. But when I got well, I left the tiny town of Lugait, to the green pastures of Cagayan de Oro, where I proved to the Filipinos that Americans can look shabbily poor (a real shocker for most of them). I took a job as a Financial Consultant with the Asian Life Financial Assurance Company, which is what I do today.

Eventually, I have a dream of starting a language school in Lugait, probably in June-September. It will be working with English teachers from Vietnam to force them to speak English in a way everyone can understand. My present employer actually looks forward to the day I no longer work with them and they are the school's first corporate backer.

Lugait, Misamis Oriental (population 17,000, but it has an area of 1,200 square miles!), is next to Iligan, Lanao del Norte (population 300,000 with 900 square miles), which has a very famous professional band (with whom I will be playing once I get back to Lugait).

For the believers in the TubeNet community, I earnestly covet your prayers in everything I do. I'm engaged to be married (the woman in Lugait) and I try to do a good job with the insurance company here in Cagayan de Oro (population 560,000 with 190 square miles--ever notice how the area has very little to do with the number of people who live in a place?)

I'm now back on the block, so do stay in contact...

Welcome back, Bill! Glad your recovery is going well.

LoyalTubist wrote:For the believers in the TubeNet community, I earnestly covet your prayers in everything I do.

Prayers sent! I found out just how important that is last summer.

I was admitted to hospital in early June with toxic colitis (the infection was already systemic when I was admitted). Two weeks later, they found extensive dead tissue in the colon, so I had a colonectomy/ileostomy done (and a second surgery shortly thereafter when the remaining intestine developed a leak). Was in intensive care, heavily sedated, for a month, and on a ventilator for 3 weeks of that time. Went from the hospital to a nursing home in mid-August for rehab & continued healing, and home just before Thanksgiving. Started playing (euphonium) about a month-and-a-half ago, have moved to a borrowed Yamaha 621 C ... should be back on "the big horn" in a week or two.

There's no doubt in my mind of the power of prayer -- I had a *lot* of people praying for me, and strongly suspect that I wouldn't have survived without that.

Glad to hear everything finally seems to be on the upslope again.

Prayers to all of the above from "splat"

(who wouldn't be here himself if it wasn't for the power of... )

Welcome back! I agree prayer works. And best of luck with the language school.

I just moved to a new place this weekend here in Cagayan de Oro to a much nicer neighborhood. I'm so happy and pleased with the way things are working out today and this week. Josie (my girlfriend) came to see me on Saturday and it was a real joy to see her and I was actually able to help her out for a change with some things. It's so nice to be on the giving end than the receiving one.

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!