Thanks for the letter - it's always nice to be informed. It looks like you guys are all doing well and keeping life interesting. I'm excited for all of you.
This week was another rough one ( mostly for my companion). The week kicked-off to a good start; our appointments were going through, we set a few baptismal dates for some investigators, we found some promising new investigators, and we came up with a different game to play in home evenings with members besides " I spy with my little eye" that everyone could understand ; musical spoons - except with pens, and I provided all of the music making drum noises with my mouth ( there was no guitar) you should have seen these people diving to get a pen when the "music" stopped. Hilarious. They nearly broke the coffee table every time. So things were going pretty good I thought.
But then at about 6:30 Tuesday evening, Elder TS mentioned in passing that he kind of had a headache. Now, headaches for me have always been a fairly regular but inconsequential occurrence - usually attributed to not enough water or sleep or both - so I didn't think too much of it at the time. Also, TS didn't make any further mention of it after that so we kept working. But during the last appointment, I noticed TS had gotten pretty quiet (he's always quiet, but something seemed wrong) so I looked in his direction to see what was wrong. He looked miserable. He was red, and sweating, and even shaking a little bit. So we ended the appointment, went straight home so he could rest. We took his temperature -he had a fever of 103.3, so I gave him some fever reducers and lots of water and called the mission office. He survived the night, but was definitely out of commission for the day, and while his fever went down, he was not feeling much better. Later on, we went to a clinic to see what was wrong. And the diagnosis is.......Pneumonia. Yes, Elder TS has Pneumonia. As a result, the work was put on hold for a recovery period, and I've kind of been stuck in the house all week. He's gotten a little better, and we hope he'll continue to do so. He has a return appointment with the doctor tomorrow . So say a prayer for Elder TS, he needs it.
Healthwise, I'm doing alright. But I'm going a little crazy from being stuck in a missionary house for a week, and not being able to work. I also feel a little guilty that I'm not so good at reading the signals TS sends to indicate that something's wrong, and I've apologized since................................at this point the computer stopped working and I had to write you another " I'm alive" letter ................................................... so now it's several days later and I've decided to send as is, with a tag at the end but again, I am pressed for time.
It turns out that this week ended up being another "fun-filled" week here in Madagascar for everyone. TS will recover, but until then I had to call some members and get one to stay in the house all day with TS, while the other goes around with me. There's not really enough beds for all of us in the house, but I've found that even an undersized chair cushion on the floor can be comfortable if you're tired enough. Also, Malagasys have no qualms about sleeping in the same twin sized bed together - in some cases, that would be less than they're used to - so that works out. kind of. There's still the question about how I'm supposed to feed everyone on the already tight one-man allotment, but I'll be talking to the AP's and the President again for that Mon, in the mean time, rice is nice, and more importantly: cheap. SO....we're having a good time here. I think we're all having fun, albeit a stressful kind of fun. It's kinda funny, sometimes Malagasy Minis ( mini mission = members who help us when full-time missionaries are scarce) just leave for no apparent reason without telling anyone (this morning my mini went to buy some herbal tea without telling anyone, just before we had to leave. Two hours later, he used somebody's cell phone to call and ask, "When's our first appointment?" sigh.) It's also funny when you leave a member in a missionary house all day - "Where'd all my bread go?" "Who ate all the candy in my care package from home!?" ;) "No you can't have my CD player!" ;) However, they did do a nice job on the dishes. Misaotra Betsaka.
So, I hope all is well with you. Thank you Richard Dibblee for the E-mail, I needed that. I'm looking forward to another fun week. My hairline has most definitely receded. I don't know how, but I'm even skinnier than I was before, but even entirely-composed-of-rice Malagasy's have noticed. Call me vain, call me skeptical, but I'm having serious doubts about that talk that says "You will return from your mission infinitely more attractive than when you left...." oh well ;). Maybe I could be one of those "He's got a great personality" guys. So I gotta start working on that, the mission's end is closer than it seems :)
OK then Veloma,
Elder Draper
No comments:
Post a Comment