sometimes God needs to slap us in the face.


In July 1994, I took a week off


my hematology/oncology practice in Duluth, Minn., to volunteer at a Habitat for Humanity building blitz. I was drawn by having worked with Habitat locally, and the blitz was going to be in Eagle Butte, S.D., on the Cheyenne River Indian Reserva- tion, about 70 miles from my child- hood home. It was chosen for being deemed the reservation in the U.S. most in need of better housing. The worksite was on the edge of town, with 1,600 volunteers assigned to two-person tents on the prairie. It looked like a Civil War bivouac, with 800 tents in rows, and two large tepees in the center hous- ing President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, plus the director of Habitat International, Millard Fuller, and his wife. We were randomly assigned to work in pairs. I got John “Jack” Eary, a retiree from Caterpillar in Peoria, Ill., now living in northwest- ern Wisconsin.


If you doubt the presence of God


acting in the world, the first minute of a Habitat blitz should cure you, with 1,600 hammers, saws and drills all starting at once. Many of us had chills—we stopped to take it in and reassemble our wits.


By Friday afternoon we had con- structed 30 nice homes in a large circle as the new owners wanted, with a playground and corral in the center. They were completely furnished, carpeted and ready for habitation. On Tuesday night, one girl began going to sleep in a sleeping bag amid the sawdust of her bedroom, having never had a room of her own. She had never even lived in a house with a washer and dryer.


Eary and I worked hard, and at the end of the week said goodbye.


He asked if he could come up for a physical exam sometime in the fall, living only about 90 miles from our clinic.


His exam and lab tests were nor-


mal, and I still don’t know why I got a chest Xray. It was an unusual afterthought as he was leaving. I said I’d call him the next day with the results. A radiologist called me immedi-


ately to say Eary had an 8-centimeter mass in his left lung and two smaller ones in his right. A biopsy the next day showed metastatic melanoma, stage 4, almost always deemed hopeless. No effective systemic treatment existed.


The primary tumor had undoubt- edly been from the skin on his right face, a lesion felt to be benign and cauterized six years before but not examined pathologically. This can- cer spreads by the bloodstream and can go anywhere in the body, often terminating with dozens of tumors compromising vital organs. Our thoracic surgeon reluctantly consented to operate on both sides. I felt that having six years of meta- static growth and only three visible tumors, perhaps we had a chance the remaining cells would be slow growing and we could buy some quality time. The risk of having more tumors in the near future, how- ever, was extremely high—basically


a given—making surgery almost certainly futile. After recovery, I monitored Eary


closely with lab and CR scans, initially every three months, then extending the interval until we finally stopped. When I retired in June 2011, Eary and I just hugged and wept. He doesn’t think about his cancer much anymore, and I long ago quit holding my breath when he came in. We have often laughed after many years of surveillance that his insurance basi- cally paid for our discussions about the Spirit. We just happened to be called to this Habitat blitz, randomly assigned together, with a request for a physi- cal with an oncologist at the end. Why the chest Xray is the piece that is the most mysterious to me. My wife and I have two adult daughters with an unknown dis- ability. Shortly after his surgery, Eary and his wife found out they had a grandson with a significant disability. This only drew us closer together. Eary’s daughter wrote to Carter about our story, and my safe deposit box harbors his handwritten note to me. The president said he shared the story with his family and that there are unexpected blessing in these work camps that he appreciated hearing about. 


Have time, talent and enjoy travel?


Help build churches and camps where and when needed. Experience spiritual growth and lifelong friendships. 1-800-643-5295 or th_chase@msn.com


Mission Builders...Carpenters for Christ April 2013 33


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52