Wickedly cold Wednesday

When I woke up it was sunny, -11°F with a wind chill of -34°F. We expect a high of five above. The good news is tonight it will only go down to one above and will climb all the way to nineteen above tomorrow afternoon.

Tom and I have a young friend, met through the blogosphere a few years back, who moved this past year with his parents to Katy, TX. He is finishing up college, most of which he had done in California where he grew up. There are a lot of significant health problems in his immediate family, although his own health is reasonably good. Without going into details about anything (since God already knows all that), I would ask you to keep Karl and his family in your prayers. Thanks!

Also, as you probably know from the news, things in Kenya are not getting any better. Again I ask prayers for my Carmelite friends over there and for the people of Kenya. Some of you may recall that at one point I was supposed to be sent there. I even learned a tiny bit of Kiswahili: Sijui kusema kiswahili vizuri. Sema pole pole. [Translation: I do not speak Swahili well. Please speak slowly. "Kiwswahili" is the Swahili word for the language.] After it was decided that I would not go, for a while I was the person in the United States who was delegated to be the contact person for the families of the friars in Nairobi to keep them updated in case of unrest like we are seeing now. Nothing ever happened on my watch that required my doing anything, for which I am grateful.