By Al Everett
When you come face to face with your mortality, staring at the ceiling of a hospital room, your whole life is open to self examination. I got to this place because I went to give blood. Pat and I had been on mission teams to Guyana, South America for several years. Guyana is one of those countries on the Red Cross list that causes you to wait one year after your return to give blood. It had been a year when there was a Red Cross Blood Drive at our church and I went to give my share. I had been a regular donor, having given nearly three gallons in my lifetime. Well, when they did the hemoglobin test this time before giving, I failed the test. My doctor ran another series of tests and sent me to a Hematologist/Oncologist who diagnosed me with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), an incurable blood disease that caused my red cell, white cell and hemoglobin levels to be quite below normal. The MDS morphed into Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). The Duke University Medical Center Bone Marrow Transplant doctors were willing to undertake my case as I was otherwise a healthy person. I first entered the Medical Center for treatment on May 12, 2009, and was there in the hospital and clinic off and on through January 2010. At one point, the charts on MDS and AML showed I had about four months to live. The doctors first had to get my AML into remission before finally considering me as a Bone Marrow Transplant patient. Fortunately, that occurred in July and a donor search was undertaken to find a donor. That occurred in August, and I got my Bone Marrow Transplant on October 13, 2009.
As I write this it has been 235 days since my transplant, and it looks like it is going to be successful, although it will be a lifestyle change to resist all the bad things that could happen if I don’t take the meds and stay out of the sun. The chemo I took was a very rough experience, causing fever spikes, blood pressure spikes, disorientation, overall body weakness, and a general feeling of blah.
When you come face to face with your mortality, life is open to self examination.
A month after the transplant I had a heart attack. It was categorized as a “widow maker” attack because two thirds of men do not survive it. Fortunately I was in the Duke Medical Center at the time, and was taken down one floor to the medical ICU. A gathering of doctors of all sorts of expertise were there when I awoke from the experience. Tests showed one artery was totally blocked, although my system had formed a totally new artery bypass. Two other arteries were partially blocked, but not requiring a stent or other heart surgery. The totally blocked artery meant that I had a previous heart attack that I was unaware of. The miracle was that my system made its own bypass!
This little background gives you an idea of the seriousness of my situation and why I had time for self examination of my mortality and the lifestyle I had been living.
I had surgery in June 1992 to fix a herniated disk in my back, caused by too heavy lifting of wall board on a mission trip to South Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo. As I was recuperating at home before going back to work, Bob and Mabel Frost had invited Pat and me to attend Camp Bethel that summer. They were on the mission trip with us that year and knew of the pain I had suffered. We stayed in Bethel Hall, had breakfast and lunch at the Frost Cottage, and dinner in the dining hall. The Bible Study that year on the Beatitudes was one of the richest Bible Studies I had ever participated in. We sang in the choir and enjoyed the music under the direction of Jim Marshall. I don’t remember most of the Vesper Services as the whole experience of being high on the shores of the Connecticut River was overwhelming. I believe the closing sermon that year was entitled “Honey, We Forgot to Tell the Kids”. For several years later, I took the notes from that year’s Bible study and used it in several church settings. I also witnessed that “if we forgot to tell the kids”, we were only a generation away from their knowing God and being assured of salvation through Jesus Christ. I have heard many sermons at all sorts of churches in our travels, but that is the only sermon that has stayed with me and one that I often get a chance to witness about.
When we got home after that first Camp Meeting we asked ourselves, “What just happened to us?” Were we dreaming it or did it actually occur? We knew we had to go back another year and see if it all was a mirage, or if it was the most spiritually rewarding experience we had ever had. The second time at Camp week showed it was the real thing. We met some wonderful people, got to share many faith stories, continued to be impressed by the richness of the Bible Study and the music. Jim Marshall seemed to enjoy getting the most out of the ones who showed up and it was exhilarating.
In the years since, we were privileged to be Program Chairs and Mission Chairs, and became members after a moratorium was lifted one year. We experienced Connecticut River trips, swimming at a nearby State park, looks at mansions on the Long Island Sound, listening to wonderful musical guests, and great evening speakers. A Baptist preacher introduced us to Galatians 5:6; “The most important thing is expressing your faith through love.”
We have “graduated” to the RV Park and do not stay in Bethel Hall anymore, but the whole Camp Bethel experience has remained faithful over the years. One year we even ran into one of the preachers who taught us to sing from the Brown Covered Hymn Book at a restaurant on Prince Edward Island in the Canadian Maritimes. At another time we ran in to the Pump House Host and Hostess in Mexico at EPCOT Center in Disney World! We have also spent some time in mission doing repairs, etc. at the New Life Community Church in Jacksonville, Florida.
In two trips to the Holy Land with Camp Bethelites, we had a further chance to cement friendships made at Camp while exploring the many venues where the stories in the Bible more than likely took place. We studied and prayed at many of the same places we “explored” in our Camp Bethel Bible Studies.
I don’t mean to say that Camp Bethel is perfect. It is an organization run by humans who have biases and different interpretations of what it means to be a Christian, or how to act as a Christian. My prayer is that it will continue to speak to a variety of people seeking God and the purpose He has for their lives. Camp has been a blessing to Pat and me, and I am humbled by the thoughts and prayers that our Camp Bethel friends have shown us as we recover from this Bone Marrow Transplant experience.
May God continue to show His Grace on Camp Bethel, and may Camp Bethel continue to be a spiritually rewarding place where Christians can come to learn that “the important thing is expressing our faith through love,” and where “we learn to pass that faith on to our children and grandchildren.” May we, as members, continue to learn what God’s purposes are for our lives. May we also learn to put those lessons to use when we return home to live out the Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, knowing that God is with you, even to the end of the age.”
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