the power of the internet

so today . . . we have good news! rollie's excellent doctors have found his problem and fixed it! he has to stay in the hospital a couple more days, but when they turn him lose, everything should be back to normal. actually, it should be better than normal, because he will have almost as much blood as a normal person and it shouldn't be leaking out anywhere!

through this experience, i have seen not only the power of prayer (thank you God for keeping him alive until he would finally go to the doctor!) but also, in a different way, the power of the internet.

on wednesday morning, while diandra was waiting alone in urgent care while rollie and i were seeing the doctor, she blogged about how prayer changes things. we had agreed not to call anyone until we had some news to share, so she was purposefully vague. but she was worried about her dad, and she wanted to share her experience, so she blogged. about an hour later, she said, "you need to call grammie. she read my blog, and she is worried that you or dad are sick." well, dad was sick, so i looked up the number and dialed . . .

last night when i got home, i was so tired. but i needed to blog. so much had happened and i was afraid i would forget how fortunate we had been. so although i didn't include a lot of the details of our day, i did want to document it. so i blogged. and then this morning i got a phone call from one of our friends from oregon who read the blog and was worried . . .

as i was talking to my friend from oregon, diandra was sitting in one of the chairs provided for visitors. they are not the most comfortable chairs, and so she tweeted, "hospital chairs=not comfy. at least my dad is awake :)" not long after that i got another phone call from another friend in oregon in response to her update. and so i explained the situation once again.

and then i got a text from my mom who had just answered a phone call from my aunt who was asking about rollie, because her daughter (my cousin) had read diandra's update on her facebook page . . .

this afternoon i had to plug in my phone, because the battery was totally dead! i don't think that has ever happened to me before . . . when i checked the messages later, there was a message from a friend of mine who is on vacation. so i called her. she is visiting someone who used to go to our church and still receives prayer requests by email. they were on their way home from an outing to a museum, when she decided to check her email on her phone. and she saw the news that rollie was in the hospital. so of course, my friend called to see how he was . . .

i guess if we want to get the word out about something, we just need to blog and tweet and post it on facebook, and pretty much everyone who matters to us will find out. good to know.

and as for rollie, we weren't trying to keep you all in the dark--we were just busy taking care of him.

and since every post is better with a photo (which i know i am terrible at doing . . . ) here's one of rollie getting ready to go to the hospital. does he look like he only has 6.4 liters of blood in his body?!?!?!