Emtala Mackey?

It's been a bit since I posted anything more personal than vacation photos on this blog. As the Internet has unlimited potential for both good and creepy people to use it, I usually error on the side of paranoia when it comes to how much personal information to post on it. But now that I'm officially past the "magic" twelve week mark, I feel free to announce my good news with the Blog-o-Sphere (all six people who care enough to read my blog as (ir)regularly as I post on it).

I'm pregnant! The new fiber enthusiast is expected to arrive in early March. (Because I miscarried early with the last pregnancy, I wanted to wait until the first trimester and the greatest danger of miscarriage was over before I posted about it. Neurotic, but true.)

We received very good news from the New Start church in San Francisco over the weekend. Their church board voted unanimously (How amazing is that? I mean, how often can you get twelve people to agree on pizza toppings, let alone pastoral candidates?) to present Brian's name to the congregation for a "would you like us to ask this person to be our next pastor?" vote. So that's an important hurdle overcome in the church-finding/pastor-finding process. We really loved the people and the church, would be delighted to come there if they called Brian. So now we wait...

However, this does mean that if they vote yes (and he says yes) we will be moving with me five or six months pregnant. Our health insurance right now is through my work, and it's really hard to find a job in any field when you're heavily pregnant, but especially in nursing. With the national nursing shortage, I do have the added advantage of the fact that hospitals and clinics are incredibly desperate for qualified nurses, but mid-to-late pregnancy generally precludes the level of heavy lifting that nursing requires.

As I lay awake worrying in my insomniac moments, I am repeatedly reminded that God has been with us this far and He will not abandon us now.

I have also been encouraged by (cynical) advice from the other nurses at work. "Well, if you can't get health insurance by the time you're in labor, you can always name the baby 'Emtala.' "
(EMTALA is the Federal statute which stipulates that if you show up at an emergency room in active labor (or having other medical emergencies occur) you must be diagnosed by a physician and treated regardless of your ability to pay. Sadly, it's the closest thing the US has to "right to health care" concept.)

Even if I do have to invoke EMTALA to deliver the kid, I don't think we're going to commemorate the experience in quite that way.

San Francisco!

Brian and I went to San Francisco last weekend (the 11th, 12th, and 13th) to visit a church he was interviewing at. Brian is trained as a pastor in the Church of the Nazarene and he's been looking for a church to pastor for the last several months. Due to my evil work schedule (made evil not by the number of days I work, but by the recently rescinded rule that required me to work three out of every four Sundays) I haven't been able to go with him for any previous church visits.

The church is New Start Ministries, which is in the Richmond District of San Francisco. At the moment, they're sharing a building with Sunset Chinese Church of the Nazarene (in a jaw-droppingly obvious "Great White Tourist" moment, I tried to take a picture of their church sign just because it was in English and Chinese, and this blew my puny redneck mind, but it didn't turn out. Instead, here is the view from the corner of the church lot.)

The gentleman on the left is Dr. John Calhoun, the District Superintendent. (As I explained to the teens sitting next to me when they asked "who's the dude giving Communion?", he's a very high mucky-muck in the Nazarene hierarcy.) You can find a better picture of him and a brief biography here.

The gentleman on the right is Jack Jung, who not only made us feel very welcomed at the church, but also was kind enough to drive us around San Francisco for a few hours so we could take the usual tourist pictures. Here's a typical one, shot at a high speed from the inside of his car.

Brian shot this one:

And here's what Alcatraz looks like as you speed by it on the freeway overpass by Golden Gate Bridge:



A congregation of turtles at the Palace of Fine Arts:

I love mangos and all things mango, so you can imagine my delight when they served this at the after church potluck--mango ice cream!

The church arranged for us to stay at the Hilton, which is far and away the nicest hotel I have ever seen or stayed in. Here is a (bad) picture of their grand lobby:

And a final picture of Laura (Jack's wife) and John, one of the kids from the church. Aren't they adorable?