But drugs on drugs helped fix the nausea, and Cathy was able to finish the infusion. This one was a pretty negative experience, though, unlike the first round of chemo last year.

As before, the infusion at the hospital is followed by two days of home-administered infusion with a carry-along pump. I think Cathy might return to the land of the living sometime Friday night after it gets disconnected.

We are so grateful for everyone who is praying for her!

First Mobile Pastor Training in Cameroon

Saturday morning marked the launch of the first mobile phone pastor training in Cameroon. About 20 people came for an orientation session and, if ready, to purchase their “PTL smartphone.” (PTL = Pastors Training in Leadership). Ernest, the technical coordinator for this program in Francophone Africa, set up this launch in his home city, Yaoundé, Cameroon. Zarc, my coworker from Nairobi who is the overall tech coordinator for this project, and I traveled there to help Ernest get things going and to see how things are working on-site.

Ernest, the PTL Tech Coordinator
in Francophone Africa

Getting phones and memory chips here was a non-trivial task that took many months. The phones are almost too expensive already without import tariffs, so our African leadership has chosen to avoid adding on any other costs and hand-carry batches of phones to the various countries. Keeping these two critical ingredients (phones and memory chips) in sufficient supply will be a challenge here.

Cameroon is a bilingual country (French and English), but I think Zarc and I were the only two other English speakers in the country besides our “Campus Pour Christ” coworkers. My bad high school French confused just as many people as it worked on. And half the time my fading Hungarian would come out, and I couldn’t remember if the word I just said was actually Hungarian or French. This didn’t earn me any smiles.

It is good to be heading home!

Cathy begins chemo treatments soon, and I am traveling on Mother’s Day today. So this trip was expensive in more ways than one. Cathy assured me the trip would be OK, and her sister came down for a visit while I was gone. But I will be happy to be home.

Tuesday afternoon at the beach,
the day we found out

It looks like Cathy will be resuming another round of chemo soon. Last Tuesday we learned that a spot on her lung which had appeared in one of her routine follow-up scans is, indeed, cancer. It is colon cancer in the lungs, as apposed to lung cancer, so this is apparently better. Her oncologist prescribed chemo treatments every other week for two months and said he is very hopeful that it will respond well.

Cathy had been fearing the worst when this spot became an issue, so the news on Tuesday was actually a relief. An afternoon trip to the beach and a few days of adjusting have really helped, too. There are no difficult decisions left to make for the next two months, so we will take one step at a time and trust God to walk us through this. Cathy is familiar with this type of chemo, and it’s not too bad with minimal hair loss. So there are a few things like this we are grateful for in the midst of this news.

If the spot responds well, there is the possibility of removing it completely, at which point Cathy would be cured of this one. That is what we are praying for. This isn’t the path we would have chosen for ourselves, but we trust that God knows what is best for us. We would be so grateful for your prayers as we begin this next phase of treatments.

Social media sites are bad places to give exclusive control of your content, a point emphasized by Steve Raquel of IOV Media in a seminar today at Cru on how to maximize the impact of your online communication. One of the principles he emphasized was the need to control your content. That is, don’t give exclusive control of your content to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or any other social media site. Instead, post your content on your own website (like hertzlers.com) and use social media outlets to attract attention and draw your audience to your website where you retain control of the content.

In an effort to heed this advice I installed a plugin on my blog that allows me to push blog posts to both Facebook and Twitter.

Now I just need to start writing more ……

Curt, Jerry, Jim, and Andrew
at the Gulf of Mexico

Cross Florida 2013 (170 miles) was fun this year. Starting from Cocoa Beach on the east coast of Florida with an east wind, 60 F temperatures, and a group of 14 friends from the Eastside Cycling Club, it was a lot easier than last year and, in many ways, more fun. These were the three I finished with, Curt, Jim, and Andrew.

One-way exit gate for
Mrs. Squirrel

Who will win? Jerry vs. Squirrel

Andrew and Jerry biking on Andrew’s 21st birthday

Living in Orlando means December is a great time to be outdoors. Andrew and I spent a few hours mountain biking on nearby trails on the afternoon of his 21st birthday. This was my first time trail biking as an adult, but Andrew is a pro. It was a fun time and a great workout.

2. My wife is really strong.

3. I won’t understand why. I don’t know why God blessed us so much during this cancer year. I thought it was supposed to be terrible. Sure, it was difficult at times, but we have had friends who brought us meals, an organization that gave Cathy space to go through this treatment without pressure of losing her job, a team of ministry partners who gave generously and prayed endlessly, and the team I work directly with filled in on things I couldn’t do because I couldn’t travel.

4. I didn’t miss traveling like I expected. A year of being home each weekend and riding with the Eastside Cycling Club has made me a stronger rider and introduced me to new friends. That has been fun.

5. Cancer puts it all into perspective. Health isn’t the most important thing, our souls are. And we prayed far more for the health of the souls of our children than we did for the health of Cathy’s body. And we’ll keep praying.

I suspect God has at least five more things for me to learn this coming year, too.

Getting her digestive system working again has been the problem. She hasn’t been able to stray far from the bathroom for any length of time.

We had a second visit with her surgeon yesterday who confirmed that things are, indeed, improving, and we gained a lot of information that should help put things into perspective for Cathy. We keep praying for her recovery to a somewhat normal life again soon.