Well, my voice survived just fine after speaking nine times over the weekend at the Champions Centre church in Tacoma. That’s the most speaking I’ve ever done in one weekend, so I was worried, but everything went well. We had 300 come out for the Perfect Weight Seminar on Friday, and 228 on Saturday. The folks at Champions Centre church told me that 2,650 turned out during the four church services that I spoke at.

But what’s more on my mind is a couple that I met over the weekend in Seattle. It all began when I was doing an interview with Kim Keys, who hosts a local show on the TBN network. We got to talking about this and that, and after the tape stopped rolling, she leaned over and told me that her husband, Derrick, has a weight problem.

“How much weight are we talking about?” I asked.

“Six hundred pounds,” she replied.

Kim, 31, is a normal weight, but I could clearly see the concern etched on her face regarding her 34-year-old husband. Normally, when you hear about people that heavy, they are so obese that they can barely get out of bed and walk to the bathroom. Derrick still leads an active life, however. He’s a worship leader at his church and has a full-time job at a correctional facility—a prison. They have one adopted child and two foster kids at home.

Kim says Derrick is a warm person who lights up the room. When he comes home from work at 7 p.m. each night, she hears the garage door go up, and the kids can’t wait to jump on him. But because of his weight and increased risk of dying prematurely from cardiovascular disease or diabetes, “I fear the day the garage door doesn’t come up,” Kim confided.

I asked Derrick and Kim if they would agree to be interviewed with my camera crew. They didn’t hesitate to say yes. Derrick said that he remembers as a child that his mother told him that he was always going to be heavy, and sure enough, that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ballooning out to 600 pounds has taken a toll on everyone in his family, he said, as well his marriage. The only way he can get to their second-story master bedroom, he said, is to crawl up the stairs one by one, but many evenings he’s too worn out to complete the task, so he sleeps uncomfortably on the couch.

At the prison, the inmates love to make “Fat Albert” jokes—Derrick and Kim are African-Americans—at his expense. Then there are the everyday indignities that he must live with. For instance, Derrick can’t get on a commercial airliner—he wouldn’t squeeze himself down the narrow middle aisle. Then there was the embarrassing incident at a local amusement park, where Derrick got on some type of roller coaster. When the roller coast wouldn’t budge from the added weight, Derrick was asked to get off to the stares of the other riders.

Derrick has tried to lose weight, and he even submitted to lap band surgery. The idea behind the operation was to create a small pouch in the upper part of the stomach with a gastric band device that was placed around the upper part of his stomach. The resulting pouch dramatically reduced the functional capacity of the stomach, but Derrick said he gained 100 pounds since the surgery.

Listening to Derrick and Kim’s stories—and their willingness to do something—I made a snap judgment and offered to “adopt” this couple. That means we’ll work with Derrick so that he can reach his perfect weight, so to speak.

I told Derrick, “What if you knew by January 2010 that you could be 250 pounds?” Derrick eyes lit up. Then I offered some practical help to him get there. I said we’re going to provide them with a budget to shop at Marlene’s Market & Deli in Tacoma, and anything they purchase above their normal budget for groceries, we’ll make up the difference. I also said that I’d have Garden of Life send him nutritional supplements and snacks at no charge.

“And if you reach your goal of weighing 250 pounds by January 2010 two years from now, we’ll send you and your family to Disneyland,” I promised. Now that this offer is in print on my blog, it’s a promise set in stone.

I encourage anyone reading this blog to pray for the Keys family. Derrick knows his back is against the wall, and he’s motivated to change, but he has a very difficult task in front of him. I have every confidence he can lose the weight he wants to lose. When I left Seattle last weekend, I got Derrick started on a ten-day Perfect Cleanse. Lord willing, we will have a powerful testimony.

Late Sunday night, I took a “pink eye” flight to Dallas and then on to West Palm Beach, so I didn’t get home until late morning. My wife, Nicki, and I are in the stages of adopting an infant boy named Samuel. Until the adoption is official, he is allowed to visit our home with his foster mom, Karri. (Samuel is living in the Nashville area.)

Soon as I got home on Monday morning, I was making my famous infant formula. (I share that recipe in my new book that also released this month, The Great Physician’s Rx for Children’s Health.) Samuel’s been on regular organic powder formula, and he was pretty constipated upon his arrival in Florida, so I made a double batch of infant formula. I’m happy to report that Samuel experienced an awesome cleanse, and his skin looked a lot better, too.

Meanwhile, Alexis, the daughter we adopted last year, and my oldest child, Joshua, are doing great. Sure nice to see them.

I was home two days before leaving for Salt Lake City today. I’ll only be in the Utah capitol for two days, so my schedule will packed with breakfast meetings, TV interviews, and in-store appearances. All good, though, I much prefer to be busy.