Of Chocolate and Prayer

I was going to call this post "Of Chocolate and Miscarriages," but that's just a little too weighty. Thus my title "Of Chocolate and Prayer".

First of all, I now have around 740 M'n'Ms in a large jar sitting in my room. I won them at the school-co'op that I go to--I take a writing class there. I never thought I was actually going to win one of those guessing games were you write the number of M'n'Ms you think are in the jar, but I wrote 642 on a slip of paper and handed it to my friend Hunter's mom, Robin. Hunter, Amber and I were getting really competitive; Hunter said he had counted them before and had come up with 650, though his mom had added a few handfuls more. So I went back and changed my vote--thanks, Robin--to 705. I barely beat Alex out of winning the candy, by only ten or twenty, I think. But anyways...I have a feeling I'll be looking at that jar for a long time. ^^

My science teacher, Ms. Bakos, had a daughter who became pregnant about twenty weeks ago. They took ultrasounds--they wanted to know right away, as she had had several miscarriages (I think that was the reason)--and saw twins, non-identical. A few weeks later, they took another ultrasound; the doctor who took them examined the pictures for several minutes, and then asked the daughter and her husband, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Or am I just crazy?" Because there, imprinted plainly on the sheet, was a third baby! They missed it the first time! Ms. Bakos brought the ultrasounds to us, beaming from ear-to-ear as she proudly showed us her future grandkids. Yesterday, however, she walked in, and I instantly knew something was wrong. She walked a bit slower, her red tear-filled eyes were rimmed with purple half-moons and her head was bent as if a great weight was hanging over her. I got this awful feeling in my stomach, and sure enough, her daughter had just gone into labor the night before. The babies were only nineteen weeks old, much too young to survive on their own. She just started crying when she told us...just crying. Tears were pouring down her face several times throughout the class. I gave her a hug afterwards, and told her I'm praying. I would love it if you all would include her and her daughter and son-in-law in your prayers every once in a while.

I'm also going to a nursing home tonight. See, my church has this mentoring program, and once a month we go with our pods (two other mentor-student pairs) to a service environment, serving for about four hours. I'm so excited to hang out with my awesome mentor and really good friend Kelli. We get to play bingo. *laughs*

Later,