Teaching while under surgery!

Another two delightful stories from our active teacher Richard about making the best of every opportunity to teach! Shared on the 'gnats into Eagles' Yahoo! group, and used with his permission.

4 April

I just found out there are many different areas of the heart that each have specialists. One is electrical. My appoitment today in this area showed that I needed a pacemaker now. He wanted to send me to the hospital and have a PACEMAKER put in yet today but couldn't get into the hospital till Monday which was also full but he had me come in at 6 am to get it done...

I told the doctor that I loved the knowledge of different cultures and asked if he would mind me asking what his Religon was. He appreciated the interest and replied Sikh. I showded that I knew what Sikhs were and told him I was a Baha'i. He said he was very familiar with the Baha'is.

I then said to him, "I came to you 'seeking' help with my heart, and I find that 'seeking' knowledge.about my heart introduced me to a true 'Sikh" in ever sense of the word and it is so rewarding to me to have a Sikh help me with my 'seeking'. It is good to be in Spiritual hands!"

He is about 40 and enjoyed my sense of knowledge and poked fun at my humor (or lack of it), whichever it is.

10 April

It is now a day after I had my pacemaker put in. Pulse was 40 down to 20 for the past year. Now it is a steady 70. Wow! I guess my body now has nearly twice the blood flow for the same period of time. That has got to give me a rush!

There were 6 people in the operating room for the hour of the surgery. I taught the Faith to one of them for the entire operation. When my Sikh doctor saw [my wife], he said with a smile that I talked Baha'i the entire operation. I could only see one person's face and it seemed right to keep talking about the Faith. While the doctor was working on my heart, hopefully I was God's scalpel to operate on the doctor's soul.

I cannot believe that I could be recovering considering a hole was cut into my chest, a foreign object was put into my body, two wires were threaded through a vein into my heart with 2 screws being inserted into my heart with the attached wires.

Could it be that teaching is a medicine that is healing me?????????? ???

I mentioned or taught the Faith to about 20 different staff there. I have promises that some will pull up the web site. One went right to the hospital's computer and pulled up Bahai.org and he was very touched and last night he came to my room and we talked for over an hour. He wanted to come again tonight. But I was ready to go home.

It seems logical to me that I was responding to God's call to make teaching the "Dominating passion of my life."

Love you,
J. Richard Hoff