 Above: Lisa and Rich back at home together after Lisa’s 5-night stay at the hospital. Dear Friends, (From Lisa) Thank you so much for your prayers and kind words during my hospitalization. I am not out of the woods, but I am home, taking two strong antibiotics. The infected mass that grew around my ruptured appendix shrank considerably through your prayers and five days of IV antibiotics. It is not gone, my surgeon stressed, and my blood numbers are still not in normal range, so I need to rest and monitor for fever and pain, and go back in for more tests in a few days. But it was delightful to get a full night's rest in my own bed. I had never understood so fully the saying that a hospital is no place to get well or get rest. To all who replied with kind notes, I did not reply but read them all and smiled--I am grateful. We appreciate continued prayers for full healing. Gratefully, Lisa (From Rich) I too am so grateful to have Lisa back, and thankful as well for all the kindness shown us in this time. In other news, I have written a few books! Ten, to be precise. To be clear, they are short and simple, with no footnotes, and they contain many things I have been teaching for about 40 years. The series is called Sketches of Leadership (sound familiar?) and the books are compilations of “Sketches” around different leadership and discipleship topics. Each book contains 10-12 Bible studies that could be used by a small group or ministry team, but of course they can be read by individuals for their own learning and growth. Now, I did not stop my teaching ministry in Asia to write these books. The pandemic produced a great surge in writing energy in me, and my collection of written Sketches of Leadership tripled during 2020-2022. Several colleges in Malaysia and India asked me to teach courses on different leadership topics, which required me to develop new material. This prompted new sketches. I have now put all this into short books (70-100 pages each). I had resisted putting these into book format for over 20 years, since I began developing my leadership material. I am committed to the inductive Bible study process, and my material was delivered almost exclusively as Bible studies intended to be inductively led in small groups of students, staff, church members and leaders, pastors, etc. But in the last year I kept having conversations with pastors and leaders that made me realize that having a more familiar and portable content delivery vehicle such as a series of books would allow me to reach a wider audience, and perhaps more deeply, even though I would trade away my beloved inductive process. I believe these short books will be helpful in Malaysia, India (even in English, but especially in translation) and elsewhere. And I hope that you who read our letters will find them helpful. In the US, these books are now available on Kindle and perhaps eventually in print. For the next few days (through July 12th) they are free on Kindle. So, if you have an Amazon Kindle or Fire (or a Kindle reader on your laptop) you can download free Kindle versions of these books. In fact, if you would do that, then you can write a short review of one or more of these books and that can help them become better known and noticed. If you have any interest in these books, but do not have a Kindle reader, you can download one for your laptop here. You can also find a Kindle Reader app for your phone, but I personally couldn’t imagine reading these on a phone. I encourage you to visit Amazon.com for the complete list of books, although the list is also available on our blog, with more information about each title. Let me highlight a few of the titles:
I have pursued the growingly popular self-publishing route. 1) The process with IV Press takes a long time—from inquiry to published book was almost 2 years, and that was after I already had first drafts completed. I didn’t want to wait to get these vetted and approved by IV Press, which was of course not certain anyway. 2) I wanted to produce books in Malaysia and India that the average person in these countries could afford. I think printed books will be priced at a level of about $2.50 in India and about $4 in Malaysia. Thank you so much for your prayers for Lisa! We were very encouraged by the response.
Thank you for your prayers and notes! They are very much appreciated. If you’d like to read a short sweet lament Lisa wrote about her time in the hospital, visit our blog. Rich and Lisa 
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 I’ve just returned from a six-day hospitalization for a ruptured appendix, a malady which went undetected for several days--long enough for a serious infection to set in. Many aspects of this journey, which began three weeks ago with moderate but persistent stomach pain, have been frustrating and confusing. It can be challenging to access medical care in a foreign country. An initial doctor’s visit may have failed to cover all the bases (or it wasn’t appendicitis by that point), it didn’t present in the typical way (no searing pain or fever), etc. At any rate, I am grateful I eventually got the care I needed and pleased with many aspects of that care. But there were moments that hit me hard. Like the lizard fiasco.
I had asked friends on Facebook to post pictures of their pets to cheer me up. An array of adorable dogs and cats soon filled my feed, along with the odd bear in a driveway and the determined raccoon scaling a window. Each one made me smile and buoyed my spirit. Animals of every kind delight me, and I was touched as well by the kindness of my friends. Though I was tied to my bed by the IV drip line attached to my wrist, my doctor wisely encouraged me to seize the moments when it was detached for bathroom breaks and take walks. On the fourth day I was especially bored and lonely (I have an attentive husband but inevitably spent many hours on my own). So, I ventured out to the entrance area where fellow inmates were being released to waiting cars. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the tiniest lizard I had ever seen, a bit more than two inches long. I mused that it was the size of the infected mass inside me that we were trying all week to shrink, but cuter and much more diligent at doing pushups. I bent down and watched it fetchingly flex its triceps. I thought, “I’ll take a picture and post it on Facebook as my pet—a “thank you” for all the pet posts I’ve received!” I’d left my phone charging but headed back up to the fourth floor and got it, hoping against hope it would still be there when I returned. I got back just in time to watch a janitor mopping the lizard into a pile. “NO!” I cried. I found it on its back fighting for its life and flipped it back on its belly. At that point the janitor scoldingly shook his finger at me and smashed the little guy to death with his mop. I turned away and silently screamed, and tearlessly wept, shaking my fists in frustration. “Why, God? What cruel trick was that? Why pile that on to my pain, making me come down here to see random suffering?” That remains baffling, just as the whys of this whole appendicitis incident remains a bit of a mystery. I don’t fully understand what hearing from God looks like or claim to know for certain when it is happening. I rarely get more than inklings. But what I heard quite clearly as I pondered it later was, “I did not like watching that either.” This seems right to me—God takes no pleasure in suffering. God cannot or at least does not always prevent it, but God does come alongside. God sees. And God suffers with us, and with this whole groaning creation, even down to its smallest lizards. And musings on creation, from the likes of Lewis, Chesterton, and even Calvin, make me think that God also takes pleasure in watching lizards do their pushups and will one day restore a kingdom where all his creatures are treasured. Setting theodicy aside for a moment, I want to be clear that I am not griping that I live in a country that treats animals poorly. I live in a country in which one janitor was callous toward one lizard. I see well-loved dogs every day here. This is not a cultural reflection. It’s a lament. Life can get hard. My last three weeks were hard. The lizard smash was a microcosm, a visible manifestation of all the hard on going within me. Its one grace was that it afforded me a moment to cry out in visceral lament, instead of just soldiering on. It no doubt hit me harder because I was fragile and worn down—perhaps it was silly to let it upset me. For now, I’m going to keep trying to learn the lifelong lesson from my very small sister, who was always so good at noticing the smallest good gifts life sent her way: I’ll keep delighting in pet pictures, the kind friends here who visited me in the hospital, and tiny lizards doing pushups as long as they have breath. Photo by verdian chua on Unsplash
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