Dearly loved friends,
I am writing just after New Year's Day as Debbie and I enjoy a quiet day at home in Colorado. Life continues to be full but less scheduled than it has been for most of our lives. As of a few months ago, I greatly reduced my travel. At 75 and with some health issues, we felt it was time to slow down some. I began making twice monthly round trips to New York back in the late '80s to develop relationships with Ambassadors to the United Nations. We later moved to DC to work with Members of Congress and continued work with Ambassadors in NY and began traveling to many places all over the world, often with a Member of Congress.
Debbie and I celebrate fifty years of marriage this month! The second best choice of my life (after asking Jesus to run my life) was asking sweet Debbie Keyser to be my wife and partner! What an amazing gift and blessing she continues to be! We live near two of our three families and five of our eight "Grands" and the other three are in Kansas, just a few hours drive. We live very near several of our dearest friends and less than two hours from the mountains. I am an Elder-Emeritus at our large church and both of us minister in various ways there.
I continue to stay in contact with my friends in Congress and out of Congress and I was very involved in the 2024 National Prayer Breakfast in DC. We will spend a week in DC around the 2025 NPB-Gathering to be with friends. Debbie and I are both involved with study and fellowship groups in Denver and often have folks come to stay with us. With email, texting and zoom, we spend lots of time connecting with folks. For the last year, I have been very involved in a clinical trial for Alzheimer's Disease (AD). AD has been in my family for generations and is most devastating on females. I do have the markers for AD in my spinal fluid and some minor symptoms of AD in my life. I was very happy to agree to participate in a clinical trial to hopefully help find better treatments and eventually, cures for AD. I have gotten accustomed to the regular spinal taps and during the 45 minutes each time when two people are holding me very still as the Dr and her assistant are putting a needle into my spine to draw fluid out and put other fluids and drugs into my spine- the medical team usually asks me to tell them stories of some of my crazy experiences of traveling around the world. So, we have that going on…
We are enjoying life and relationships and spend a lot of time communicating with people near and far. Debbie and I were in a condo in the mountains recently for three nights of reading and writing some (and watching a few Christmas movies) while admiring beautiful views of the mountains around Breckenridge, Colorado. We had each taken books and papers and old journals and among my papers, I found a random copy of a letter/prayer list that I sent out to friends in January, 1993. I found the sameness of my prayers and concerns then and now more comforting than frustrating because then as now and as in the New and Old Testaments, "The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the whole earth that He may strongly support those whose hearts are completely His." (2 Chronicles 16:9)
Blessings and peace,
Stan