Welcometoestonia... in Canada

So right now we are over in Vancouver, Canada as you might have gathered having a break and visiting Maarjas mum and dad (Katrin and Alari) who are over here on a sabbatical (of sorts) Alari is currently the pastor at Vancouvers United Estonian Baptist Church...

Its really interesting seeing the Estonian minority who came here as refugees during the second world war (to escape the "liberating" USSR), so far we have spent a lot of time visiting Alari and Katrins new friends, speaking Estonian (and getting lots of compliments for speaking Estonian) eating Estonian (sült which isn't too popular in Estonia nowerdays), singing Estonian folk songs and so on... The local Estonians are almost more Estonian than the Estonian Estonians who live in Estonia :)

The Estonian churches (Baptist, Lutheran and Orthodox) here all conduct traditional meetings in Estonian and the baptist church seems to be wrestling with how to move forward and reach out, Alari is doing his thing stirring things up (english language outreach etc) Its interesting that national culture and national identity have been such a key part of the church here and have shaped the churches model to such a large degree, for a country with such a small population but such a strong national identity all expressions of national identity become so much more precious, its means a lot to the first generation of Estonians here that their children and grandchildren know that they are Estonian and speak Estonian...

Vancouver is beautiful and the people are great, very friendly, very caring, very generous, and very kind... very Estonian and very Canadian which is a good combination.

hyperprolactinemia

OK, so one of the bigger bits of news that we have kinda mentioned in passing but not gone into much detail over is Maarjas illness, the illness is hyperprolactinemia and here is a quick overview of what we have been through so far...

(Background, as a voluntary worker in Estonia and as an Estonian national Maarja does not recieve free healthcare or discounted prescription medications, I paul do however as a British Citizen doing the exact same)

1. January 2008; Maarja misses several periods, takes several pregnancy tests and has lots of "pregnant" symptoms (at this time Maarja is on the pill and stops taking the pill just in case)
2. March 2008; we go to a clinic to talk about what is going on, ultrasound shows we aren't pregnant, blood tests show abnormally high prolactin levels leading to a diagnosis of hyperprolactinemia (not very nice) and a prescription of bromocriptine (not nice stuff)
3. Thoughtout 2008 and 2009; Maarja takes bromocriptine on a cycle of roughly 6 months taking it (leading to reduced prolactin levels) and 1-3 months not taking it (leading to prolactin levels shooting back up), we receive lots of prayer for healing sometimes coinciding with new improved blood results, sometimes not (we trust and believe and pray God will heal us to this day)
4. February-March 2010; while we in the UK for a conference having just had bad blood results in Estonia and not having made it to pick up a prescription, we go to my GP and have a chat, he sends us for bloodwork and is generally shocked we haven't had an MRI, after a slight mix up with a nurse allowing us to believe for a whole weekend that everything was fine again, we get results showing high prolactin and further tests are done to show its not due to stress or anything along those lines (this one does get the imagination going how do those clever doctors find out if blood cells are stressed or happy). so anyway this leads to an MRI appointment which takes a month, MRI results take quite a while (the NHS is on a mission to save the post office as far as i can tell, someone should mention to them that email is really quite ok) and they come basically a few days ago... whoops...
5. April 2010; our lovely GP gives us a call to ask if we can pop in for an appointment (we happen to be in Canada and explain that its quite a distance) our GP tells us that Maarja does have a tumour (microadenoma, prolactinoma) but it isn't cancerous and we should go to see a endocrinologist...

So, please pray, we are committed to being in Estonia and right now we don't want to go back to England we are praying about September but we want to make a wise decision and not leave people shorthanded getting something sorted quicker than is needed

a blog about blogging

just a quick post to say that we are going to resurrect our blog (its a good season for resurrection), its been a long time since we wrote anything anywhere about what we are doing, where we are doing it and why, when we came back to England in February we wrote briefly to say we intend on blogging to keep people up to date with our news, its now April so like always this is well overdue!