"Followers"

In the community where I teach, there is a religious group, which most of us know next to nothing about, called "Followers." Basically, the only thing most of us know about them are that they have very large families and are not allowed to go to the doctor. That's right, they do not seek professional medical care. As you can imagine, this leads to an unreasonably high amount of unnecessary deaths. That is actually what prompted me to write this blog.
A girl in my first period class was not here this morning, and I'm not sure that she'll be back to take care of her finals this week. When I asked why, I was told that her dad passed away. Well, she belongs to one of the families that is known to belong to this particular religious group. Because of that, they'll never really know why he died. But, that's not the worst of it. Last week she was telling me that her dad wasn't doing too well. She went into some of the problems he was having - things that would have been easily treated by a doctor. But I knew that wasn't an option for them, so I didn't even ask if he had been to see anyone about the symptoms he was experiencing. What a shame, though, to have medical problems and not be able to get them treated. Now, the ironic thing is that they will take their animals to the vet. Hmmm....
So, I decided to look into this a little further. Here's what I found... an article from the Oregonian in 1998: http://www.rickross.com/reference/foc/foc1.html Another website states, "A series by the Oregonian newspaper announced that of 78 minors buried in the graveyard over 35 years, 21 "probably would have lived with medical intervention, often as simple as antibiotics." If so, the cemetery may represent one of the largest concentrations of faith-healing-related fatalities in decades."
Apparently this is a religious sect/cult that has been around for a number of years. That doesn't surprise me as much as finding out that it's real big in Oregon City! That's right. Who knew!?
Well, this is something that comes up every now and then among the staff here, but since none of us belong and the students we feel we can talk to about it don't know why they do what they do, we don't really get any answers.
Has anyone else ever heard of this?

Boot Camp

So, I started an extreme work out a few weeks ago at a gym in Boise. The workout is so extreme that they call it Boot Camp. The girls (both of whom are younger than all of the boot campers - lol) in charge have whistles and if we don't move quickly enough from one station to the next, they'll blow their whistles and make us do push-ups. It's kinda funny. Actually, the whole thing is pretty fun because it's about 7 women who are all in about the same shape. What? Round is a shape - lol. No, I don't think I'm round... just curvy :) Anyhoo, so it's nice because it's not like there's anyone who's blowing the rest of us out of the water. Oh, so I finished one session of boot camp. Each session is 4 weeks, every Saturday morning. And today I started another one. I really wasn't originally planning on doing this one, but I really felt the benefits from the last one, so I decided to bite the bullet and do this one, too.