How I kicked the flu in 1998 and last week.

In 1998 I was back in the States after 8 years away. Everybody at my aunt's house came down with the flu in turn except for me.

Somewhere I had read about Sacagawea, the Indian guide for Lewis and Clark, drinking a pint of oil to stave off sickness. (I could not find a trace of this anecdote when I looked it up on the web for this post.)

My aunt was cooking Spanish Rice that night and I persuaded her to leave in all the chicken skins because

1. The oil from chicken skins in chicken soup supposedly kills germs.
2. Nobody wants their chicken skins?! I will totally eat them for you.

That night I peeled and ate garlic after garlic with the chicken skins and rice.

In the middle of the night I woke up feeling royally indigested but I refused to get up and went back to sleep.

I was fine in the morning. My mom and sister were throwing up and my cousin would soon be incapacitated in agony, but I never came down with the flu.

Fast forward to last week.

The first we knew my sister was sick was when she started gagging over supper and ran to the bathroom but couldn't even throw up. She just sat on the sofa with a fever and tears running down her cheeks. I just held her and hugged her and kept giving her as many good things to sip as I could think of, a big dose of C, as high as I could safely give her of A, grapefruit seed extract in a cup of water, strong hot ginger tea, etc., and she was all well 2 days later.

It was the afternoon of that third day when I felt the distinct stirrings of nausea. I got to a stopping point on my laptop and took 2000 mg of C before I remembered I had to get some activated charcoal down me first.

If you've never heard of activated charcoal it's a backup that hospitals will give you for food poisoning if for some reason they can't pump your stomach. 2 decades ago my dad ate something bad and came racing home in a taxi with diarrhea. He took charcoal and then went right back to town that day.

I knew I really shouldn't take them together, the charcoal might try to absorb the C and the C might ruin the efficacy of the charcoal but I didn't want to go into this without charcoal.

20 minutes later the nausea was still there and had ratcheted up a notch. I imagined my forehead felt warmer than normal.

I peeled 2 garlic and ate the slices in between typing. When the garlic got too hot, I sliced 2 more garlic and swallowed them down like vitamin pills with a couple of glasses of water, trying to crush them a bit first with my teeth on the way. The nausea went away.

An hour or so later the nausea came back and I washed two more garlic down with water. Again the nausea went away.

At supper I was really hungry and knew it was my last chance to nip the flu in the bud if I didn't want to be throwing up my supper. I remembered my 1998 experience. I had no chicken skins but I had olive oil.

So I took about 5 tablespoons of leftover spaghetti-sauce-ground-beef-macaroni, poured 3 tablespoons of olive oil over it, some liberal pinches of salt, and 4 HEAPING tablespoons of some Parmesan cheese we had just got in the house for New Year's. I love me a little spaghetti with my Parmesan cheese, oil and salt ... it was scrumptious! Why hadn't I been doing this when I wasn't sick? Every bowl of food must taste better swimming in olive oil, Parmesan and salt.

It was so delicious I had two more bowls just like it, eating a clove of garlic with each bite, and then I finished it off with some fresh-ground hot coffee to make sure my stomach acids kicked in and digested the food before my body decided to be sick.

The nausea never came back!!! Not that night nor the next day.

I can only guess what my breath smelled like for Bible Class later but I was happily full and slept well all night, my forehead back to normal.

That was a total of about 15 cloves of garlic and almost 9 T of olive oil.

Sunday Photos

Ling's mom became a christian recently.



Tracy is that person who leaves the trail and comes back with something to cook. Here she picked some greens from somewhere outside our house for another sister after services.



Christine and her husband do the church bulletin every week. Here they are on the right. I teach their 3 beautiful children - a bookworm and two twins.



My mom and dad.



Joyce invited Tracy out to eat on her birthday. Ling and her mom, Jared, Candi and I went too.

This was a hot pot restaurant. Beside each table is a small gas tank on the floor hooked up to the burners:









Walking back after lunch.



Afternoon coffee in a tea cup.



Tracy and I went to the market so she could fix soup for supper. She seldom gets to cook at home.




I shot this video because even though I'm used to seeing live fish on the table (as kids my brother and I would stand at the fish stall waiting to see if one would flop off the table) this was the first time I was horrified to see live fish with their tails tied up to their mouths (just barely seen in the video) still breathing.



Tom Yam Soup



Tracy won.

Jesus Lover, Christian - What's in a name?

We met an American at a wedding feast last week. I think his name was Jim. The music was so loud we were shouting back and forth across the table and even then we sometimes had to shout the same thing 3 or 4 times before being understood, or not.

Jim said he likes to call himself a Jesus Lover and not call himself by the name of a particular group. After all if the important thing is accepting Jesus as Lord, why would you call yourself by the name of a particular group?

Here are things I wish I could have thrown into the conversation to ask him about:

*** Do you think accepting Jesus as Lord includes obeying his commandment to be immersed into him?

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3:27)

Would you say that you are not in Christ until you are immersed into him?

*** You prefer the term "Jesus Lover" to an unnecessarily divisive name like Baptist, or Methodist. That is a very Biblical concept:

Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, "I am of Paul," and "I of Apollos," and "I of Cephas," and "I of Christ." Has Christ been divided? (1 Corinthians 1:10-13b)

However, would you consider using the term "Christian" since that, at least, is in the Bible?

but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name. (1 Peter 4:16)

According to this verse it would seem God specifically wants us to use the term "Christian" to glorify him.

If the term "Christian" is in the Bible, but the term "Baptist" is not, then wouldn't making up the term "Jesus Lover" which is also not in the Bible be more akin to using the term "Baptist" than using the term "Christian"?

Shouldn't we do Bible things in Bible ways and call Bible things by Bible names?

It would have been good to hear what he had to say. It would have been fun to talk about all kinds of things to do with the Bible. Meanwhile I really appreciate him for bringing up something as interesting as the Bible to talk about and not the weather.

Jim, in case you ever see this post, here's a guy who also doesn't think we should be doing anything but what is in the Bible.