Roger Penner roger penner

It all started with encouragement the end of February, 2018 from Dad and Duane. I was having pretty serious pain in my hip and right leg that wouldn't quit.  I had been noticing worse pain in my back within the last year. Duane encouraged me to go visit with the ONZ doctor that comes to the states once a year. He found out they were going to be in Los Angeles, Houston and Belize the beginning of April. I made connection with the ONZ contact from Manitoba and he set me up with an appointment Saturday, April 7 in LA. The 21st of April I got a referral for an MRI and x-rays.  I got the x-rays that afternoon. Some days later I confirmed my appointment in LA and made an appointment to have an MRI on the way through Bangor to Boston to fly to LA. We left for Boston April 5 and got the MRI in the evening in Bangor. We flew out of Boston the evening of the 6th. We got into LA late and drove down to the hotel where they were having the consultations and spent night. The next morning there were several other people in the lobby who were assigned appointments so we visited with them. A short time into our consultation the dr. told me what he thought needed to be done. I needed two rods put in to align and stabilize two vertebrae to help straighten out a curve in my back. He also thought I needed two discs put in below that point. We visited about a few other things and our 20 minutes were up. The Gospel Tract couple  in LA had invited us to spend night. That was a bright spot in our trip!  We left early the next morning out of LA for Boston.  I had received an email Saturday evening detailing the procedure and tentative appointment for May 9 in Germany. We left Boston early the next morning and began to call some of our family. It seemed there was direction to move ahead without delay and bump the appointment up if possible. I was offered April 18 or the 25th. We knew we wouldn't be ready for the 18th, so we took the 25th appointment. Little did we know what all it was going to take to get to Germany. We had promised the Lord on March 21st in front of the doctors office that we would walk through the doors He opened unto us. Now it seemed like there were a lot of doors that needed to open in a short time. Late Monday night I made tickets to fly to Germany. The next day I found out our passports were out of time required so we made an appointment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the next Monday morning to get them renewed. In the meantime there were doctors visits and blood tests that needed to take place. Each one seemed to fit into the remaining time. We left for Bangor the afternoon of April 21st, one month after we had committed it all to the Lord. We flew out early the next morning with a 9 hour layover in NYC. We left NYC later in the afternoon arriving in Paris before the sun came up. After spending 1 1/2 hours in Paris we took the hour flight to Dusseldorf. We arrived to a landscape looking somewhat like home with an absence of rock and many more people.