Lifestyle

There’s a great story in Act 16. The Apostles Paul and Silas end up prisoners in Philippi for preaching the Gospel. (There’s way more to why they were imprisoned, but you can read that part.) So, even though they were beaten and imprisoned, they prayed and sang hymns, which led to a miraculous earthquake that shakes the prison. When the prison shakes, the doors are opened freeing all the prisoners. The jailer, who knows the seriousness of being the guard on duty when there are escapees, witnesses this and he is terrified, and pulls his sword to take his own life. But Paul and Silas speak out quickly that they are all there—no one has escaped. It’s so astonishing to the jailer, that it leads to the jailer asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Through a series of newspaper articles, we have been learning about some of the major types of dementia. We started with Alzheimer’s type dementia which is the most common type of dementia. We then explored Lewy Body dementia and learned that that can either refer to dementia with Lewy bodies or Parkinson’s disease dementia. The next article focused on Frontotemporal Dementia to which we discovered there are 5 main types: Behavioral Variant, Primary Progressive Aphasia, Corticobasal Syndrome, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, and FTD with ALS. In the last article, we explored Vascular Dementia, the second most common form of dementia. Today, we are going to learn about Mixed Dementia.

Whenever I read this story of Jesus healing the paralytic at the pool, this question Jesus asks the paralyzed man makes me stop and think why wouldn’t this man want to be made well? We’ve learned through reading scripture as well as commentaries, that in places like this pool area many people come there to be healed. We are told in John 5 that there are like five porch areas where many people would wait, people who were invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed like the man in this story. These people waited for healing. Healing that they believed would be given to them if they were the first person into the water after an angel came into the pool and stirred the water. So, when the water started to move, someone would jump in. The paralytic was never able to enter the water.

Do you belong to a book club, study group, learning circle or other gathering where people get together to connect around reading or education? If so, you may be interested in checking out one of the three titles that Prairie Five has available in our Book Bag collection. Each book bag has 12-15 copies of the same book title and a discussion guide. I’m happy to serve as the discussion leader if you’re considering this for a community event.

Last Sunday on Mother’s Day, my husband and I had just teed off on hole one at Granite Run Golf Course when we saw billows of smoke to the east. I said prayers that no one was hurt, and then soon the emergency services started arriving on the scene. For hours the sirens continued as tankers and trucks roared in, out, and around the area. We watched the smoke for hours. It would deflate like it was about to be over, then it would swell with intensity. The color would change as the fire made its way through the different kinds of flora acting as fuel. While sad that loss was occurring, and a bit afraid that it wouldn’t be controlled before extensive damage took place in the community, we watched the smoke in awe.

In previous articles, I have been writing about the different types of dementia. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there are 11 different major types of dementia – however as we have learned, there are then different variants / sub-types under those 11 major types. In fact, dementia expert Teepa Snow claims in total there are over 120 different types, causes and forms of dementia. For our purposes, I think we will stick with just some of the most common types!