Jen and Mike Davis - a journey through fear and faith

Jen and Mike Davis celebrated the birth of their second child, Cutler, on July 8 of this year. Cutler had lots of brown hair, got to bond with his parents that first day, meet his big sister Riley, and seemed perfect and healthy. But the next morning brought a dramatic and terrifying change.

Cutler’s day nurse had worked previously in a cardiology clinic. “She said she thought she heard a murmur,” Jen said. “She took Cutler off to be tested, and then she came back without him.” The news wasn’t good. Cutler was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, moved to the neonatal intensive care unit and given medication to keep his heart beating.

Cutler Davis after diagnosis

Thus began a journey that would take Jen and Mike through worry and fear, the necessity of learning all kinds of medical terms, and what faith means when faced with the possibility of losing a child.

For Cutler, the prayers began immediately following the news that his life was in danger. At barely 24 hours old, he was taken by ambulance to Children’s Mercy Hospital. Since this turn of events was completely unexpected, Jen had yet to be discharged after giving birth, so had to remain behind for a short while.

When you are told that your baby has something wrong, something life-threatening, emotions can wash over you in waves. Shock, fear, and a desperate attempt to make everything right. For Jen and Mike, that attempt came in having Jen’s mom contact Pastor Mike and ask him to baptize Cutler. Interestingly, Pastor Mike and Cutler share the same birthday. Pastor Mike had just finished a game of golf when he got the call, so he went home, cleaned up and headed to the hospital.

Pastor Mike said the family gathered in the hallway for prayer, then went to Cutler’s crib for the baptism. “The cool thing about Cutler’s baptism,” Pastor Mike said, “is that the hospital brought me a bottle of sterile water to use.” That is an illustration of how, as he explained, God uses everyday stuff in ways that connect us to him. “It’s tangible evidence of God’s presence in things we can’t understand,” he said. “In this situation, baptism is where we see the promise that God will never forsake us.”

Cutler's baptism

For a terrified parent, such a baptism is also an illustration of how our faith moves us to cling to God, completely helpless, yet trusting that he is there for us when we need him the most. Cutler was 36 hours old at the time of his baptism. That was a Wednesday.

Then something good happened. “On Friday, we were told that Cutler’s heart problems went from being severe to mild in function,” Jen said. Specifically, that means both his left and right ventricles improved in function, and the aorta wasn’t as small as the doctors had thought. Jen noted in her blog that the doctors were surprised at Cutler’s improvement in less than 24 hours.

The doctors laid out a plan, with Cutler’s first surgery scheduled sometime within the next couple of weeks. But that plan changed pretty quickly, and all of a sudden, Cutler was scheduled for surgery on July 15, one week after his birth. Up to this time, Jen and Mike hadn’t held their baby since the day of his birth. They could touch him briefly, and had gotten to have him lie on a pillow on their lap, but skin-to-skin contact was restricted. The surgery went well, and basically gave Cutler time to grow a little bit more before he faces possible open heart surgery in the future. And finally, Jen and Mike were able to hold Cutler for the first time in nine days.

Cutler remained in the pediatric intensive care unit following his surgery. His health continued to improve, though in fits and starts and with occasional setbacks. He had trouble taking a bottle, holding food down, so the feeding tube remained in place. His breathing was erratic. On July 23, he was moved to the cardiology floor, which was, as Jen described, a little more ‘home-like.’ Then his sodium levels dropped, though he was finally up to taking about an ounce a day of food by bottle. He finally began to gain a little bit of weight, and was taken off most of his medications.

As Cutler continued to improve, Jen and Mike dared to dream he would be coming home soon. But then another problem occurred, this one with the stent that was placed in Cutler during his first surgery, to keep his patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) open. The PDA is a normal fetal blood vessel that closes soon after birth. With Cutler, that didn’t happen, therefore the stent. But now, as the PDA was starting to close, it was restricting the stent. Cutler, usually good-natured in spite of everything, became fussy, agitated and unable to eat. By now, the stent was determined to be too short, and the PDA tissue was causing some blood flow blockage. So in a second surgery, the doctors were able to extend the stent and allow the blood to flow back through the heart valve.  

The Davis family

Then came August 14. Cutler had been in the hospital for 37 days. He had been poked and prodded, had blood transfusions and shots, been surrounded by medical equipment and personnel. His parents had lived in a surreal world throughout this time. Mike, who is in restaurant management, said that his employees weren’t sure what to do or say around him. But August 14, a whole new experience began for all of them, because this was the day that Cutler finally came home, that Jen slept in her own bed, that she and Mike could be parents in the normalcy of their own house.

Cutler’s health still isn’t certain. He likely faces open heart surgery, but a December 12 visit will help determine more about that. What is certain, though, is that Cutler is a miracle baby. From the nurse who had the experience to notice his heart murmur, to the hundreds of people who joined voices in prayer, from the baptism which seemingly brought unexplained improved heart function, to the surprising improvements in the way his ventricles functioned.

Cutler - happy at home

As Jen and Mike recently shared this story, the experiences they’ve been through were readily apparent in voices choked with emotion, in the tears that kept welling up as they recalled events. “You sit back and prioritize,” Jen said. “My prayer was that God would be there for him, just watch over him.”

Jen has written about Cutler’s journey in a blog on the CaringBridge site. In one posting, she noted that she had always called Cutler her little Superman. She wrote, “I will leave you with a quote my cousin found for him today... "So many of our dreams seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then when we summon the will; they soon become inevitable." - Christopher Reeve

If you would like to read more about Cutler’s story, visit this link: 

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/cutlersjourney/journal/view/id/53cb4267a589b4ef61aea49c.

Chris Chaney - an altered mind

The suspicion that something is wrong physically or mentally can manifest itself in a variety of ways. Perhaps it’s feeling an unexplained ache or pain, or finding a lump under the skin, or sudden bouts of crying. For Chris Chaney, it happened while he was driving.

Chris Chaney, several years before symptoms began

 Chris had just dropped his grandson off at preschool, and was returning home. “It was like someone had pulled a black curtain down over me,” Chris said. “I pulled over, and then it went away and I was able to drive again.”

In Chris’s memory, he told his wife, Janet, about it, and they went to the doctor, then a specialist.

For Janet, the suspicion that something was wrong was more subtle, and came about gradually. She said that about five years ago, she started noticing little things. “We would watch the same television show, and it was like we had each seen a different show,” Janet said. She also noticed lapses in Chris’s memory.

There is no way to qualify when Chris felt the black curtain cover his mind and his vision, or why in his memory he told Janet about it and then went to the doctor. The only certainty is that this is how Chris perceives the beginning of knowing something was wrong. But what actually prompted a visit to the doctor, Janet said, is when Chris, who was always great with directions, couldn’t remember how to get to Janet’s sister’s house. That’s when Janet knew something was indeed wrong and that Chris needed to be checked out.

That first doctor visit led to visits with specialists, which led to series of testing. Finally, two years after Janet first noticed Chris’s memory problems, he and Janet received the diagnosis: Early stage Alzheimer’s. Chris was 61.

 “I was flabbergasted,” Chris said. “I had no idea this was happening. I was scared.” Janet was scared too, but not necessarily surprised, because, as she said, by that time they were both sure that something was wrong.

Available information about Alzheimer’s isn’t cheerful to read. There is a seven-stage framework that generalizes what to expect, starting with a mild cognitive decline and ending with severe decline that causes abnormal reflexes, rigid muscles, impaired swallowing, and eventually death. On average, people with Alzheimer's disease live eight to 10 years following diagnosis, though some survive as long as 25 years.

“I was really mad,” Chris said about the prognosis. “I thought I had some good years left in me.”

Chris spent some time living with that anger, trying to process what was going to happen to him, how it would change daily life as he knew it, how it would affect those he loved. “Then I realized the anger wasn’t going to help,” he said. “I went back to being a kid, praying every day. Once I got over being mad, all kinds of people stepped forward to help.”

That help came in the form of rides, prayers, shared meals together. Chris also joined a group through the Alzheimer’s Association that meets twice a week and offers not only support but games and exercises designed to stimulate cognitive function. “We call ourselves the Crazies,” Chris said. “They’re people like me who can still get around and do things. We’re all in the same boat.” Chris said the support group has helped him a lot, especially by just being able to talk to people who are now his peers in ways they can all relate with.

Though Chris does still drive, he has found that he becomes disoriented on cloudy or rainy days. He said he can’t seem to get his bearings at those times. Therefore, in winter he becomes more reclusive. Soon, he won’t be able to attend the men’s group at Holy Cross on Thursday mornings unless someone offers to bring him.

Chris Chaney in 1994

He tries to keep himself physically fit, exercising regularly while listening to music. This man, who worked in a position of management, who earned a doctorate when he was in his mid-20s, who is a charter member and past council president of Holy Cross, now takes medication every day, hoping to slow the inevitable progression of this life-altering and devastating disease. And when he gets upset and angry, he said, he considers all those who are less fortunate than him, especially children who have suffered. That helps him put his own life into perspective.

He credits his wife, Janet, for being a rock of support. “She has a good backbone,” Chris said. “She’s tough, always practical.” Janet said she continues to work full-time, which gives her an outlet, and she tries to keep Chris engaged in daily activities.

“It’s important to keep his spirits up,” she said. “With everything else going on, getting depressed doesn’t help.”

For Chris, there isn’t much he can do but keep on living each day as it dawns, and staying as positive as he can. “There’s no cure,” he said. “That’s the one thing that really bothered me. I know that it will slowly progress.” 

There is hope on the horizon for people who suffer from Alzheimer’s. The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded on October 6 to a trio who discovered cells in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex that constitute a positioning system in the brain. These cortexes are frequently affected in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, causing individuals to lose their way and be unable to recognize their environment. This type of research may help lead to better understanding and perhaps even a cure some day for Alzheimer’s.

What they discovered might help explain something Janet has noticed with Chris. She said that, for example, she was trying to point out a weed to Chris, but he couldn’t see it. She said they had his vision tested, but his eyesight seemed okay, so it was a mystery why he couldn’t see visible things at times. The explanation might be that it’s not a vision problem, but rather how he now interprets his environment, since the mapping position in his brain has gone awry.

Chris and Janet Chaney today

Chris and Janet have two grown sons and a daughter, and three grandchildren. Family helps keep them grounded. They are also appreciative of how much friendship helps, such as people offering to have dinner with them, or coming over to spend a few hours with Chris at home, or offering to give him rides. Living in the moment is the best medicine for them, rather than focusing on the future. Chris and Janet decided to share their story because it might help someone else in some way, perhaps provide some insight or some hope.

“I don’t know why,” Chris said, “but I still feel God’s presence.” That is apparent within moments of meeting Chris, the wit and sparkle that comes from a presence deep within. God is surely with this family.

Kevin Bogner - up close and personal with wild animals

Been any place exciting lately? Kevin Bogner can answer that one with a resounding yes, after spending some time this summer in South Africa, and visiting the Madikwe Game Reserve.

Kevin Bogner acting brave with lions nearby

Kevin actually was in South Africa to work. He is a project controls manager with a local global and engineering company, which sounds like a dull, detail-oriented desk job. It kind of is, but Kevin also has the option to help on certain projects throughout the world. In the past three years, he said, he has traveled to South Africa about nine times. “We are helping them build a power facility,” Kevin said. “The goal of the South African government is to have electricity in every home.”

With reliable power, Kevin said, jobs would be available in such places as the copper mines, and there wouldn’t be continual power outages that disrupt what little electricity there is. Kevin has also worked on air quality control equipment, and refurbishing a school for New Jerusalem Children’s Home, a local orphanage.

A rhinoceros

This summer, when he found himself in South Africa with a free weekend, he and a couple of other guys headed to Madikwe, about a 3 ½ hours-drive from Johannesburg. The park, situated against the Botswana border close to the Kalahari Desert, is home to approximately 66 large mammals and 300 bird species, including what is known in Africa as the Big Five: lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and cape buffalo. It allows visitors to observe animals in their natural habitat, primitive and wild.

Kevin was skeptical at first, wondering if he would really see any animals. “We had been driving about 20 minutes,” he said, “and I thought this is boring, we won’t see anything.” Next thing he knows, he’s looking at a herd of cape buffalo. Cape buffalo have big curled horns, an unpredictable nature, and they don’t give any warning before they attack. That’s scary to know when you’re sitting in an open jeep, feeling just a little vulnerable. And at times, Kevin said, the driver rolled right up to animals, which felt too close for comfort.

African elephants

Safari jeep

Later into the drive, Kevin’s group spotted a group of elephants drinking from a small stream. Elephants can be dangerous too, but maybe not as much as the lions that suddenly appeared, circling and stalking the elephants.

Kevin explained that he had learned that predators know to look for the weakest. That could be a baby elephant, or the animals that are the last in line because they’re the oldest and slowest. They didn’t see a lion kill an elephant, but they did see lions take down a giraffe and a wildebeest, and a pack of wild dogs take down a deer and chase a warthog, which got away. Did it bother him, to see something like that? “Well, you have to realize, I’m a guy,” Kevin said, grinning. “And I was with two other guys.” He added that the ranger who drives the jeep carries a rifle, and they are all instructed about what to do and not to do. “If you fall out of a vehicle,” Kevin said, “stay on the ground. If you run, you’re food.”

Cheetah

Kevin has been to the game reserve twice, and said each experience was completely different, because he never knew what animals he would see. He has photographs of a hyena (“scary and ugly”) a cheetah, a giraffe, birds, baboons, a pack of wild dogs, rhinos and lots of lions. When his group saw these animals, they knew to sit quietly and not move. That way, they and the jeep were just one big object not posing any kind of threat, or enticement. Kevin explained that even so, you suddenly realize you’re not at the zoo where there are fences and barriers, and that all the lion needs to do is leap at you. He also mentioned the sounds that you hear in the African wild, such as the growling of the animals as they fight over a kill, or the eerie laugh of the hyena.

Kevin said that Johannesburg has a European feel to it, with outdoor cafes and decent lodgings. One evening, he ate at a wild game buffet, sampling zebra, crocodile, venison meatballs and hartebeest. “The crocodile was good but I wouldn’t have it again,” Kevin said, “and the zebra was tough. I liked the deer meat.”

African lions

Kevin’s first international business trip was to Malaysia, a journey that also took him through Hong Kong and Tokyo. In late 1999, he moved to Saudi Arabia for six months to work on a project. There, he said, he saw a man with a donkey, carrying a staff, and herding sheep, just like a Biblical character come alive.

Before the Saudi Arabia trip, he went on a blind date with a girl named Julie that was set up by a high school friend. The two hit it off, so when Kevin told her that in a mere two weeks he would be leaving for six months to live in the Middle East, they agreed to keep in touch. Kevin and Julie have been married for 13 years, and have two daughters.

Kevin & Julie Bogner and daughters

Kevin grew up in a small community, where he learned building skills from his dad and compassion through everyday life. He uses both as a volunteer with HopeBUILDERS, building wheelchair ramps and doing small home renovations for people with little to no income. He and his wife also give a lot of time to Holy Cross, teaching children and helping in a variety of other ways.

For Kevin, it’s all about giving back, or rather sharing what he has been given. “When you’ve been to a poor country,” he said, “you see how good you have it here. It’s something we often take for granted.”

Anne & Dean Panovich - a tasty new dip

“One little bean and a dream.” That is both the motivation and slogan for the business established by Dean and Anne Panovich about 10 years ago.

The little bean is the edamame (pronounced (ed-uh-mah-mey), a green vegetable known as a soybean. It is harvested at the peak of ripening, still in the pod, and is soft and edible. The beans are generally parboiled and quick frozen, and they’re known for being packed with fiber, protein, vitamins and minerals. Edamame has been used for hundreds of years in Asian cuisine.

The dream was one Dean and Anne realized they shared when they met in 1991 in Des Moines, Iowa, while working for a data processing company. They both wanted to start their own business.

Anne Panovich on a distribution day

That dream stayed in the background for the next 13 years, as they married, started a family and made a living. Anne’s background was growing up on an Iowa soybean farm. Even as a young child, she knew she was going to be a business owner one day. “I wanted a food business,” Anne said. “Cookies. I never thought it would be soybeans.”

But Dean is the dreamer of big ideas. Anne said that one evening, while relaxing with their two daughters who were toddlers at that time, Dean suggested they try to make some sort of hummus dip using edamame. You might be thinking, eda-what? But the bean wasn’t new to Anne and Dean. They had learned of it while exploring fertility options in trying to start their family. And making a dip was a natural choice for two people who snacked on lots of dips.

Anne set about trying to find a recipe. “I got on line, but there were no recipes,” she said. “I couldn’t find a thing. So I started tinkering.”

She started with a recipe for hummus dip, but it didn’t work well. So she played with different recipes and ingredients, spending about an hour a day on the project. A few months later, Anne had created six flavors of dip that she started serving to family and friends.

She received such good feedback that she and Dean decided to try selling it. They took the product to a trade show hosted by Whole Foods. “We had a little table in the back,” Ann said. They didn’t think they would even be noticed, but eventually guests began making their way back and sampling their dips. Again, the feedback was good enough to move forward with a business plan.

During the next year, Ann perfected the recipe. She and Dean worked with Kansas State to establish nutritional data. Dean chose the name, Soy-Sen-Zay. They learned about packaging and marketing.

In 2005, Ann started selling the dip at farmers’ markets. Hy-Vee became a local distributor in 2006. They landed their first national grocer, Whole Foods, in 2007. In 2008, both Dean and Anne began officially working full-time as business owners, their dream finally realized.

Looking back, Anne can see God’s hand, God’s timing, in the way things fell into place. When they were looking into how to design the packaging, they discovered their neighbor was a graphic artist specializing in food packaging, Anne said. They visited a food consultation firm in Lenexa, and while talking with the owner about how to grow a business, they discovered he was another neighbor who lived near them. Dean and Anne also made good connections with local retailers, who supported their product and in turn, helped their business grow.

Panovich daughters

When they first started out, Dean and Anne rented space in a commercial kitchen. Eventually, they were able to renovate a farm house, turning it into their own commercial kitchen. Dean has since returned to the outside work force, but Anne continues to run the business. Their daughters have always been a part too.

Anne said the business is now at a place where she needs to work with another company to take it to the next level. Whether that will come in the form of a buyer, a partner, is yet to be seen. “This is something Dean and I did together,” Anne said. “It was way out of our realm of what we went to school to learn, but it’s been fun and we’ve met some great people.”

Soy-Sen-Zay dips

Soy-Sen-Zay edamame dips are gluten and dairy free, with no preservatives added. They are great with chips and vegetables, as sandwich spreads, or as zesty toppings for fish, chicken and wraps. Flavors are original, cucumber, garlic, spicy garlic, spicy Asian pepper and ginger wasabi. Each 10-oz. tub is $4.99, and can be purchased at several area stores on by visiting the web site www.soysenzay.com.

Janice Ryan - a second chance at parenting

Janice Ryan always knew she wanted to have kids and be a mom. But her path wasn’t traditional, and it certainly wasn’t easy.

She became a part-time stepmother upon marriage, but a divorce ended that relationship before it ever had a chance. Nor was she able to get pregnant while married. “So I decided to adopt someone,” she said. She took classes on becoming a foster parent, and was especially interested in finding a child who had been legally separated from its parents. She knew it would be difficult to form an attachment only to see the child leave.

Janice Ryan

It was through a Lutheran-affiliated foster agency that she met a boy named Jason, who had just turned 12. Jason had experienced neglect and abuse, and a cycle of being removed from his mother’s care only to be returned to her each time she decided her life was back on track. When Janice met him, he was with foster parents who had planned to adopt him. But then changes in their circumstances caused the adoption to fall through.

“Jason had lived through so much,” Janice said. “His parents weren’t married, so he lived with a single mom who had mental illness. He was in and out of the system when she tried to kill herself. He was covered with lice at one point.”

Jason was brought to Janice’s house one day for a visit. “We got along really well,” Janice said. “I asked him if he would like to live with me.” So Jason came to live with Janice as a foster child. Since it was April, Jason still needed to be in school, and Janice had only a few days to figure out the school system – how to get Jason enrolled, what supplies he needed, and the like. She asked him if he wanted to keep his last name or take hers, and he chose to keep his name.

The first year Jason lived with Janice was one of adjustments, but it was a good year and they continued to get along well. His adoption went through, and Janice was his new official mom. But then things changed. Jason began acting out at school. He got involved with drugs and alcohol. He stole a car. “I was totally lost,” Janice said. “Being a new parent was overwhelming enough, but even more so with these behavioral problems.”

Janice got called to the school continuously, then by the police. She tried putting Jason into an alternative education system, but it didn’t help. The only thing she knew for sure was that she had adopted him and she wasn’t giving up on him. “I had taken on the responsibility and that was that,” Janice said. “In spite of it all, he was a kid that needed help.” Eventually she turned to ToughLove, an organization that offered support for families in crisis, and was able to get through the next few years with their help.

But then Jason committed a robbery, and left stolen stereo equipment in Janice’s home. When the police came, they eventually found Jason hiding in her attic. He was sent to a correctional facility for juveniles in Larned, Kansas, where he got his GED. Once out of Larned, he tried enlisting in the Army, but that didn’t pan out. He was in and out of Janice’s life during this time, but then called her one night. “He was stranded at a hospital,” Janice said. “And he said, oh by the way, we had a baby.” Janice didn’t know his girlfriend, and soon Jason was off again, so she had no chance to get to know her grandson.

Our faith tells us that God redeems situations. For Janice, it came about in this way. She was having lunch one day with a girlfriend, and was talking about all that had happened with Jason, and that he had a son. By then, the little boy was about 4 years old. Upon hearing their names, Janice’s friend said she knew the baby’s mom and family. “Are you kidding me?” Janice recalled saying. “This is unbelievable.”

Finally, Janice would have the chance to meet her grandson, named Arlo. Jason brought him over to spend the night at Janice’s house, then took off without leaving her the mom’s contact information. “So Arlo spent the night but I didn’t know how to get him back,” Janice said. But eventually that day she made contact, and has since formed a friendship with Arlo, his mom and her family. As Jason continued to drift in and out of everyone’s lives, he tried to use Arlo as leverage against Janice. But Arlo’s mom reassured Janice. “I will never keep you from Arlo because he loves you,” Janice said she told her.

Janice and Arlo relaxing in the extreme heat at a water park

Now Janice gets to see Arlo a lot. He spends some weekends with her, and has come to church with her several times. If you’re ever at the 10:30 service, you might see Arlo sometime. He’s the little guy that likes to play air guitar while the praise band is playing.

While parenting didn’t work out well, grandparenting is wonderful for Janice. “With Jason, I thought that if he had a good environment he would be able to change,” she said. “It wasn’t that way. But Arlo is a blessing.”

All she wants for Arlo is that he grows up healthy and happy. “That little boy has so much love in his heart,” Janice said. “He’s just precious.”

He is also a sign of God’s redemption.

Elfrieda Crouch - working in Braille

Elfrieda Crouch is 92, and has only had one real hobby. She was a volunteer for Lutheran Braille Workers for 40 years. Her work ended about a year ago, only because the method of transcribing and creating Braille Bibles and devotional books is changing with new technology.

But then, change would be the norm in nine decades of living, right? Elfrieda was born in 1922, a year when numerous radio stations began transmitting, Stalin was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party, Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the Yankees for $52,000 a year, Benito Mussolini took control of Italy’s government, Hitler was briefly incarcerated for disturbing the peace, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 19^th amendment and women’s right to vote, King Tut’s tomb was discovered, the creation of the USSR was formally proclaimed, and Warren Harding was the U.S. President.

Elfrieda’s life started out in a small Kansas town, near Manhattan. She had three sisters and seven brothers, and might have had even more siblings if her mom hadn’t died when she was 3. “I don’t remember her at all,” Elfrieda said. She was raised by her older sisters, with some assistance from her father, who was a carpenter.

Elfrieda Crouch, in foreground is a table her husband made

Elfrieda is a life-long Lutheran, Missouri Synod, and attended a Lutheran school until she became of high school age. Her early school memories aren’t necessarily pleasant, she said, since the minister of the church-run school practiced corporal punishment on a regular basis, usually with the classroom as his audience. (While the thought of a child being whipped might shock some people, it was commonplace at that time, and is still used today in places.) With high school came a new kind of freedom. “You didn’t have the catechism in front of you all the time,” she said.

She met her husband, Rex, at the Pla-Mor Ballroom, which was at Linwood and Main in Kansas City. It was part of a huge entertainment complex, and popular with people who liked to dance. They wed in 1946 and had been married almost 61 years when Rex died. Rex was a builder and a woodworker. He built the ranch home in the early 1960s that Elfrieda still lives in, and the home is filled with intricately carved clocks, wall décor and furniture that he made.

Partial Braille alphabet card

Elfrieda was a homemaker, taking care of the couple’s two sons, making sure meals were on the table, keeping track of busy schedules. She also was a regular church-goer, and it was at Zion Lutheran, which was then at 75^th and Belinder Road in Prairie Village, that she first heard of the Lutheran Braille Workers (LBW).

A representative of the organization had come to Zion to share information and seek volunteers. LBW, a ministry of the Lutheran-Missouri Synod, was founded in 1943. The organization utilized thousands of workers across the country to make Bibles and devotionals. Elfrieda signed up. “There were six of us,” she said. “It was an assembly line. I was at the tail end, binding papers into books.” Masters are made on zinc plates, with each page requiring its own plate. The plates are fitted on a press, then printed onto heavy paper. Books must be collated by hand or the raised dots will be smashed, making it unreadable.

Creating Braille publications by hand was labor intensive. “Each book was about 80 pages,” Elfrieda said. “It took about 10 minutes to do one book, and that’s if everybody was well and on their toes. We usually worked three to four hours.” 

Clock Elfrieda's husband made

While helping make the books was a calling and a ministry, it also led to much more. “Fellowship,” Elfrieda said. “We always had lots to talk about. And we would get together for a Christmas luncheon, things like that.”

Elfrieda said her husband was not a church-goer like she was. “I never pushed him,” she said. “If he didn’t want to go, then he didn’t want to go. But he is the one that picked out Holy Cross, though I don’t know why.” They were at Holy Cross less than two years when Rex died, but Elfrieda continues to worship there and in fact is there most Sundays.

Elfrieda is one of those people who you know right away has a zest for life. It’s not just in the way that she carries herself, or her markedly pretty skin, or her ready smile. She keeps busy with her five grandkids and two great-grandkids, and meets regularly with friends. “And I keep up with the news,” she said, catching up with world events each morning on the television.

So what is her secret to good health and a long life? After all, she has outlived all of her siblings, her husband and her oldest son. “I have no secrets to share,” Elfrieda said. “None at all. I don’t know what the future holds, and I’m not worried about it.”

Melissa Kesner - granting wishes for special kids

In the spring of 1980, an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer learned of a 7-year-old boy with leukemia, and that his one wish before he died was that he could be a police officer “to catch bad guys.” That little boy’s wish was granted, and the seeds were planted for a foundation to make a dream come true for children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses.

Now more than 30 years later, more than 226,000 children in the United States have been granted a heartfelt wish through Make-A-Wish foundation. It takes a lot of planning, and a lot of people, to make this happen.

Melissa Kesner with her daughters and husband

Melissa Kesner became a volunteer wish granter in 1999, after she moved to Kansas City for work. She had heard of Make-A-Wish, and knew it had a Kansas chapter in need of volunteers. For her, it was a way to connect in her new home town.

“My very first wish granting experience, the wish child wanted to be in the army for a day,” Melissa said. “It was awesome - we were able to partner with a local army base and had him go through a modified basic training camp. He got to ride in a helicopter, march in a group, and he earned an award at the end!”

One her most elaborate requests was a child who wished for an International cruise around Italy. The request was challenging for several reasons –it involved international travel, and the cost was fairly extensive. The local chapter spent 15 months coordinating with international Make a Wish organizations and individuals in an effort to grant the child’s wish. It finally came through and the trip was the wish of a lifetime!

Travel is a fairly common request. “Most of the younger wish kids that I have worked with like to go to Disney World in Orlando,” Melissa said. “For an older child, almost anything is game. I have done shopping sprees, room make-overs, cruises, celebrity meetings - there are some limitations to what we can do, but for the most part this is the one time I have always said the wish recipient can be selfish.”

One child wished for a shopping spree, so Melissa and her wish granting partner arranged for a limousine to take her to Oak Park Mall, ending in a celebratory pizza party with her friends after. Another child wanted a bedroom make-over. Over the course of several  months, Melissa was able to get in-kind donations from a local design firm and mattress warehouse, and local contract teams to paint and arrange all new furniture. The day ended in a surprise reveal for the wish child.

Meeting celebrities is another frequent wish, though not necessarily singers and movie stars. “Athletes have been more of a draw,” Melissa said. “One wish kid wanted to meet the Miami Heat players and another wanted to meet the Tennessee Titans quarterback.”

An important part of the process is to ensure the child’s wish is something the child truly wants and is excited about. The process begins with a referral, usually from a child’s physician, but anyone can submit a request on behalf of a child. Once the screening process is completed, two volunteers meet the wish child and family.

“The purpose of these meetings is to understand family dynamics, understand any medical or physical limitations, and brainstorm ideas for what the child would like to 'do, see, be, or meet',” Melissa said. The brainstorming is generally done as a game, so the child imagines a variety of ideas, and eventually narrows it down to the one special wish. Some children know right away what they want, while others need a little more time to dream.

You might suppose that meeting these children would make a volunteer wish granter feel sad. Not so, Melissa said. “Most people think Make a Wish is just for those children that are terminally ill - it can be, but it is also for those kids who have had a life altering experience, but with medical care, may live a long life. I am only with the family through the wish process, and then we say goodbye. Paperwork is part of the process - but mostly volunteer wish granters get to do the fun stuff!”

Melissa comes from a background where she was regularly made aware that many people had difficult lives. Her father was a Lutheran minister in the Missouri Synod. “I grew up being familiar with people who lived or were living through challenging situations,” Melissa said. “My parents always gave back to the community and set a wonderful example for us.”

That background helps her with her job today, as a Physician Services Manager with Children’s Mercy Hospital. Melissa’s current job has required some time adjustments, so she is taking a break from wish granting but hopes to return before long. “This is an opportunity to give back,” she said, “but also a chance to really be thankful for what I have been given. These kids are a testament to facing obstacles and working through them. How can you not love putting a smile on someone's face?”

To learn more about Make-A-Wish, please visit http://wish.org. 

Sarah and Carl Persson - hiking to Mt. Everest

(Please note: All photos used in this blog are the property of Carl Persson, all rights reserved.)

What do you want to experience or accomplish in your lifetime? Most likely you can name a few goals or ideals, but chances are that hiking to Mt. Everest isn’t one of them. Especially if you’ve had back problems or torn knee cartilage.

Sarah Persson has always loved hiking. Glaciers in Alaska, the Colorado Rockies, Austria and New Zealand have all provided backdrops for the sport. But Sarah had a bigger hike in mind. In her words, “Getting to Everest is like the “pinnacle” of hikes, wouldn’t you say?”

Sarah and Carl Persson in Nepal

One of Sarah’s earlier memories is a church youth group trip to Sky Ranch, Colorado when she was 15. “I still remember Pastor Klein driving the van down I-70 and my first view of distant mountains,” she said. Sarah spent spring breaks during college hiking in national parks. She and her husband, Carl, chaperoned a Holy Cross youth group on a hiking trip to Colorado in 2001. On a 2008 Alaska hike, a guide told Sarah and Carl that she had hiked Mt. Everest. “So once I knew it was possible, I added it to my bucket list,” Sarah said.

Hiking to Mt. Everest takes a lot of preparation. But being healthy enough to consider it comes first. For Carl, that meant recuperating from ACL/meniscus surgery. He had damaged his knee while trying to catch a fly ball in a softball game. Surgery was necessary to repair the tears, followed by a period of rehabilitation. Sarah has two degenerative discs in her lower back. “At their worst, a few years ago, my discs actually had hairline cracks which allowed fluid to leak out,” she said. “It was extremely painful, and it took more than a year away from sports, doing physical therapy and walking, to recover enough to even consider a major hike.”

Sarah at entrance to Sagarmatha National Park

Once they had both recovered, they figured that hiking to Mt. Everest was now or never, so they began serious preparation this past January. Sarah and Carl braved the Kansas City winter and walked everywhere they could, nearly every day, wearing weighted backpacks. “One of our favorite training walks was actually to take glass to the recycle bins at Wal-Mart!” Sarah said. “Our coldest training walk was around two degrees Fahrenheit, and our longest training walk was around 17-miles round trip. We hiked in the snow, on the snow, and even dug up our ice spikes after one of the ice storms last winter.”

They also found a small hill along a trail that they walked up and down for over an hour several different times. “All this must have been the right thing to do,” Sarah said, “because we made it to Everest Base Camp (EBC) and back without any soreness or blisters.”

final climb to Namche

The south base camp of Mt. Everest, altitude 17,598 feet, is on the Nepal side, and is the most popular, visited by thousands of trekkers each year. To get there, you fly into Kathmandu. Sarah spent some time researching the best price on a three-leg maximum route from Kansas City to Kathmandu. Sarah and Carl’s flight took them to Chicago, where they ran to catch their 13-hour flight to Doha, Qatar. After a 14-hour layover, they left for Nepal, arriving in Kathmandu about four and a half hours later. The return trip was similar, Sarah said, except they came back through Philadelphia. 

Early morning start to Dingboche on snow covered trail

“I’ve traveled internationally before,” she said, “but I had the worst jet lag I’ve ever experienced. It probably took two weeks before I was functioning on normal time again.”

The Everest trip had some challenges, starting even before the hike. First, the airline lost Carl’s luggage for three days. The domestic flight that would take them from Kathmandu to Lukla, the trailhead, was cancelled twice, so they had to book a helicopter. Sarah got the flu, and both she and Carl got chest colds. Next came altitude sickness for Sarah. These conditions contributed to forcing them to change certain aspects of their hike.

The highlights of the trip were meeting many interesting fellow travelers, realizing that their hard training had paid off, and of course, the scenery. Sarah’s job involves sitting at a computer in a corporate environment. “So my first thought on a hike, or walk, or anywhere away from the office is ‘yay, it’s not the office!’” she said. “Hiking gives me access to clean air and unspoiled land, seeing creation the way God intended it. I get sad when I see clear-cut hillsides, paved roads in pristine wilderness, or even trash in the local park.”  

Sarah pointing to first view of Mt. Everest

A surreal and sad part of the journey occurred when Sarah and Carl had just started back down the mountain. “The day after we were at Base Camp was the single deadliest day in recorded Everest history, an avalanche killing 16,” Sarah said. “We had met people on the way up who were planning to climb, so my first thought was whether or not they were safe. We saw quite a few rescue helicopters that day, and I still get choked up over the loss of so many, especially when I hear that their families may barely receive enough money to cover the funerals.”

Sarah was aware of the hardships the Sherpas (guides) endured before she booked her trip. “The tourism industry in Nepal has changed a lot of lives there, but the real money apparently doesn’t get to the people who do the hardest work,” she said. “That’s actually why I chose a tour company based in Kathmandu rather than one which is ‘westernized.’”

Though Everest was a primary goal, Sarah and Carl hope to take a few more hiking trips while their backs and knees allow. Sarah offers the following advice for anyone considering hiking to Mt. Everest. “My advice to anyone planning a similar trip is to always put your hiking boots in your carry-on luggage, have toilet paper in your pocket wherever you go, put some kind of mask over your nose and mouth, and take lots and lots of pictures,” she said. And that’s the voice of experience.

Reaching EBC, elevation 17,600 feet!

John Kingsley - music man

When John Kingsley first sang with a group of inmates, he was rather nonchalant about how it would be. “I went in there thinking we’re going to sing,” he said, “no more complicated than that.”

John Kingsley

That was 17 years ago, after a woman named Elvera Voth was looking for volunteers to sing with her new men’s chorus of inmates from Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas; a group she had founded in 1995 and named the East Hill Singers. At the time, Elvera was the choral director for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. One of her Lyric performers was Michael Lanman, the son of Holy Cross mission partners Bob and Dorothy Lanman, who were good friends of John. Michael convinced his dad to join the group, who then convinced John to become a part. John said, “Initially I didn’t think of it as a ministry so much as just a chance to sing in an all-male chorus.”

Yet, John gave it his heart and a huge chunk of time in the early years, going to Lansing most Tuesday evenings and an occasional Saturday for rehearsals. The chorus is comprised of inmates housed in the East Unit, the minimum-security unit situated on East Hill, which is part of the Lansing Correctional Facility. “The East Unit is removed from the ‘big house,’ which accommodates the medium and maximum security inmates and is not a foreboding place at all,” John said.

As John sang with the inmates each week, his attitude about them began forming. “I started seeing these fellows as just people who had made some bad choices,” he said. “They’re about as typical as a group of guys could be and they are hugely appreciative of the volunteers and their current director Kirk Carson.” John added that the relationships he has formed are warm and genuine.

John describes his singing voice as bass/baritone. Singing with the inmates has been an interesting challenge at times. He explained that there are no audition requirements for the inmates, and many have never sung seriously before, or had musical training or choral experience. “As a result,” John said, “it’s not unusual to find yourself trying to stay on key while surrounded by guys with their own idea of what key we should be searching for. It’s good training, but I’ve learned to block it out, sing away and hopefully provide some leadership to the others. It should also be said that we’ve discovered some marvelously talented musicians among the inmates—both as vocalists and instrumentalists.”

John had music in his background before discovering East Hill Singers. His mother played piano and led a tiny Methodist choir in the upstate New York village where he grew up. “The choir met in our living room from the time I first remember until I left for college,” John said. “Sometimes there would be four, sometimes eight or ten but I guess that was my initiation to choral singing.” He recalls singing a solo with the choir as a young child, and some singing in high school, but didn’t do much with it until college where he finally got some instruction. He never thought of singing as a calling---simply an outlet.

 “My early goal was to design firearms,” John said. “I was very much into guns (and cars) so I spent a couple of years studying gunsmithing and arms design.” The draft and military service led to a stint in the Air Force and then marriage to his wife Mary and a job with General Electric, where he started out designing Sidewinder missiles. “That was a far cry from the kind of firearms I had in mind earlier in life,” he said.

John stayed with GE until changes in ownership and management would have forced him to move to El Paso, Texas. That was a deal breaker so he started looking for alternatives. He settled on starting Express Signs in 1988 with, what was then, new computer technology. “It seemed like an easy thing to do but I was wrong,” he said. “But my A-plan was to start a family business, and that’s what I did.”

John continues to use his voice in ways that bring him and others joy. He sings with the Holy Cross church choir, and was once the voice of the whale in a children’s musical of “Jonah” staged at a former church. He has sung with a number of quartets, including one with Holy Cross mission partners Bob Lanman, Larry Colburn and Tom Cook that was formed in the early 1990s.

About eight or nine years ago he joined the Johnson County Chorus. “That was kind of a chance thing too,” he said. His granddaughter’s elementary school music teacher, Anita Cyrier, was also the director of the Johnson County Chorus. When John attended a performance, he met the director and the next thing he knew he was a member of the chorus.

John describes the music as a bit ‘meatier’ than that sung by the East Hill group but said that in no way takes anything away from the pleasure he gets singing with the Lansing men. “The term ‘ministry’ sounds a bit too preachy,” he said. “I’ve come to view my time with East Hill Singers as simply a good thing to do—for me and, hopefully for the men.”  

Jim and Linda Fargus - a heart-stopping moment

Jim and Linda Fargus have been married 44 years. Their lives were fairly ordinary most of that time. They have a son and daughter, two grandchildren, worked long careers before retiring, took part-time jobs after retirement. They traveled occasionally and kept physically active. Then came the night Linda’s heart stopped.

Jim and Linda Fargus

Jim and Linda met in college, a small university in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, where they both landed in part because of cost and geography. They got to know each other as they waited tables in the campus dining hall. They moved to Overland Park in 1999 for Jim’s job. Both retired in 2006, Jim as a project manager with Sprint, Linda as a teacher. Shortly after retirement, Jim took a job as a math instructional paraprofessional, Linda as an adjunct reading instructor at Johnson County Community College. Nothing in their ordinary lives prepared them for what was to come.

Shortly after midnight , the beginning of the Monday that would mark their 41^st wedding anniversary, Jim was awakened by a noise.

“Linda has always been an active sleeper,” Jim said. “She would sit up in bed, have conversations, and I was pretty attuned to all of that.” So when Jim heard a noise, he did the usual, which was to pat her on the arm and let her know everything was okay and she could go back to sleep. But this night, she wasn’t sitting up in bed, and he got no response when he asked her if she was all right.

Within moments, Jim realized she wasn’t breathing. Though he had CPR training, it was sheer instinct that took over. Instinct coupled with fear and adrenaline. He moved Linda to the floor, started doing chest compressions and called 911. “I had the phone laying on the floor, it wasn’t a speaker phone, and I was yelling into it,” Jim said. All he knew was that his wife had no pulse and wasn’t breathing and he was desperately trying to save her. The 911 dispatcher told Jim to stop the compressions and give her a couple of breaths. He did so and saw her chest rise, but she wasn’t breathing on her own.

He began compressions again, until the dispatcher told him the ambulance was two minutes out, and he needed to go downstairs, open the front door and turn on the porch light. He did those things, then returned to Linda. Finally he heard the siren and knew help was near.

Soon there was a lot of commotion. Jim said there were three or four paramedics, and a couple of police officers. One of the officers escorted Jim to the hallway, and kept him company as the paramedics worked on his wife. “I heard them shock her,” Jim said. “The defibrillator talks, and I heard it three times.” Jim estimates they were in with his wife for 30 to 45 minutes, before they carried her out wrapped in a bed sheet for the ride to the hospital. Jim had called his son, who lived in town, and the two of them headed to the hospital as well.

“We sat for two hours, and didn’t know anything,” Jim said. Finally the on-call cardiologist met with Jim and his son, and explained that Linda didn’t have a heart attack. Instead, she had an episode of ventricular tachycardia, where the heart beats too fast and the ventricles can’t pump enough blood to the body. It can be severe and life-threatening. And because Linda had gone a period of time without breathing, there was a very real possibility of brain damage. Linda had been placed in a cooling suit that would lower her body temperature so that her brain wouldn’t swell, and was put into a coma.

Twenty-four hours had elapsed since Linda’s heart had stopped before Jim finally went home to rest. Though Linda went into cardiac arrest again overnight, the medical team was able to keep her alive.

When something dramatic or life-threatening happens, we oftentimes look for a sign that all will be well. For Jim, that moment came Wednesday afternoon. Linda was still in a coma, and had a breathing tube down her throat, so conversation wasn’t an option. But when Jim took hold of her hand, she knew to squeeze it, a recollection that still causes him to swell with emotion as he recounts it.

Linda remained in the hospital for eight days. Her brain activity had continually been good, a positive indicator that she would once again have a good quality of life. She has no memory of the week preceding the night her heart stopped, and very little memory of the events during her hospital stay. It’s almost as though this happened to someone else, yet she knows it’s real because of the emotion she’s seen in her husband and adult children. She finds it interesting that Jim proved to be so stalwart. “This is the one,” she said of Jim, “who when the kids fell and needed stitches, he couldn’t drive them to the hospital.”

Jim was able to step up in another way too, a way that illustrated a strong faith. He saw God’s hand throughout this experience. “I’m hard of hearing, and for me to hear something like that…” Jim said, referring to the elusive sound that woke him when Linda’s heart stopped. He also trusted that the outcome would be okay. “I always knew she could die,” he said, “but I never thought she would.” Linda enjoyed hearing this from Jim, because, as she noted, “He’s the half-empty kind of guy.”

The two of them have adopted the saying, “It’s all small stuff,” meaning they have changed their perspective on what matters and what doesn’t. “Every day, every bit of time we have together is precious,” Jim said.

Jim & Linda with grandchildren

Linda has what she calls a lump under her chest as a reminder of what happened. That lump is a pacemaker and defibrillator, tools to help keep her heart beating at a normal rate. She is once again physically active, is involved in the Holy Cross music ministry, and life continues much as it used to. Like Jim, Linda too had a moment when she knew she would be okay. That time came in November, a few months after she had returned home from the hospital, when she got to hold her first grandchild. “I just thought I might not get to see her, hold her,” Linda said.  

Jenny Moore-Jansen - a fascination with the human body

The human body is a fascinating creation, the way everything works together, what happens when something goes wrong. For Jenny Moore-Jansen, that fascination has guided her life.

Her understanding of anatomy tells her just which muscles need extra work when she’s giving someone a massage. It also helps her recognize the ravages of disease on the body she is preparing to embalm.

Jenny Moore-Jansen

Jenny is a certified massage therapist. She plans to take her national certification test this summer, which will expand where she can do massages. She also will graduate in May with a degree in mortuary science from Kansas City Kansas Community College.

The path Jenny has taken thus far is an interesting one. “I had planned to be a professional gymnast,” she said. She had to give up that dream after 18 years of gymnastics when her knee gave out. “Then I was going to be a coroner,” she said. “I wanted to do autopsies. I’ve always been interested in the human body and how it works.”

When she looked into what it would take to become a coroner, she discovered she would have to endure something like 15 years of med school, because being a coroner is more specialized. “But I thought, I want to have a family. I want to have a life. What can I do,” she said.

   

Jenny started looking into the possibility of being a funeral director, talking to people who were in the field, asking them what they thought of the industry. She already had a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and had taken a gross anatomy class during the program, so she had some experience with dissecting bodies.

During this time, she became more acquainted with death on a personal level. She lost three grandparents in a year and a half. Then one Sunday she learned about murder when a man was shot and killed in the narthex of her church in Wichita while she was sitting in the sanctuary, next to the man’s wife, listening to prelude music.

Jenny took these experiences to heart, realizing there was much more to death than dying. Getting her degree has taught her about the funeral industry, meeting and dealing with families, products such as caskets and burial containers, embalming, restorative art, anatomy, and counseling. After graduation, she hopes to get an apprentice funeral director position at Johnson County Chapel and Memorial Gardens, where she presently works under an assistant funeral director license as the funeral administrative assistant. “I help out with visitation,” she said. “I help the funeral directors with services. I can lead a graveside service or committal service. But I can’t meet with the family on my own yet.”

Maybe you have a preconceived idea of what a funeral director looks like, or how one acts. If so, meet Jenny. She has a big mega-watt smile, a great sense of humor, and doesn’t take herself seriously. For example, ask her what movies she likes, and she’ll laugh even before she gets the words out, knowing what the reaction will be. “I love horror movies,” she said. “’Silence of the Lambs’ is my favorite.”

Working jigsaw puzzles is one of her favorite hobbies, but not those puny 500-piece things. “I’m doing a 32,000-piece puzzle,” she said. “It’s six feet by 17 feet. I’ve done two sections and have six to go. Each section has a little over 4,000 pieces.”

Jenny’s response is immediate when asked what she thinks she will bring to the funeral industry. “Empathy and patience,” she said. Those are especially important gifts in helping loved ones of the deceased. “Someone needs to be there for that person,” Jenny said, “and if I can explain to them how death happens, if I can make someone more comfortable with that, then that’s wonderful.”

“The most difficult situations involve death of a child and death from a murder,” Jenny said. “It’s traumatic for families. They’re not expecting that. I’m helping them through the process of a funeral. The grieving process is in stages. It may take two to three years; it may take six months.”

From Jenny’s perspective, the recent classes offered at Holy Cross on the “End Matters” of life were much appreciated. “I do think it’s beneficial,” Jenny said. “It starts people thinking about what they want, and what they don’t want.”

Jenny looks forward to the day when she can be a funeral director. It is her hope that she can bring joy somehow to grieving families, maybe by helping them understand a little bit more about death. And the physical work is rewarding too. “I’ve always looked at the human body as miraculous,” Jenny said, “and this confirms that.”