Week 87 – Oradea, România

Wow…my week literally seems like absolutely nothing compared to what I just read. Okay…forgive me dad, but I was laughing through that email. A little bit. I love that you (dad) are adventurous and daring, and I am sad that you had this accident. I am also glad that it wasn’t worse. I know it may seem that everything bad that could have happened did happen, but it at least it isn’t a broken leg. 😉 or two broken legs. 😉 I hope that I can help a little bit, although I am sure that laughing probably hurts. I honestly think though that you are more bummed that you can’t keep biking for a season than you are about the pain. I of course do not know of the pain and it sounds like I am going to get a mouthful when I get home. Hey! You might still be hurting when I get home!…bad joke. I am sorry to hear about that. I hope and I will be praying for your quick recovery. I am also sad to hear that the hospital people were not helping. Hey! If it makes you feel any better, we are not allowed to go to the public hospitals here because I have heard that they sometimes they don’t even use clean needles! That should make you feel good about going to a clean American hospital! I am glad to hear that in the end. Everybody is home and safe, and that is a very important thing. It will all be okay in the end. All I can really say is ask for a blessing or two. We have the same priesthood that brought men back to life on the earth today. It WAS restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith and I know it! We have this gift to help the lives of others and I am honored to be able to hold it, and I know that it can help you (dad) now than ever before. So I think that is a good idea.

My week was not nearly as intense as dad’s. However, I decided to name my worm Jim. So I had the adventures of Jimbo this week and it all started last week on Monday. It was a tough day, Monday. Both my companion and I had diarrhea really bad and it was getting to the point of making us very, very weak. We couldn’t eat anything because our appetites were just gone. I would eat a few pretzels and would be done. Bad news. I could drink water like it was nothing though. It was just really tough. Tuesday, wasn’t any better for me, but it got a lot better for my companion. I was having the sweats and the chills all day long, and was blessed to have enough strength to teach English class. After it though I pushed a few chairs together and slept through the activity after English. I was in bad shape.

It has also been a few degrees shy of lava and the humidity is 126%, yet it isn’t raining. So we have been sweating it out like it was nothing. It has been raining I guess. ;). Wednesday, I was on an exchanges. We were able to get outside a little bit, but I would be feeling fine (except for the stomach pain) and then be zero seconds later. It was crazy. When I was with Edler La’fou I had a different symptom of being unable to move my neck. It would hurt and cause an instant headache if I moved it even an inch. However, i was feeling a little better.

All week I had been eating basically nothing in an attempt to kill Jim. Starve him out basically. I was told to do this by a Romanian friend of ours. So I ate bread and pretzels. Oh and Sprite. So good. Anyway, Thursday I was feeling better, but I was just so hungry. The pain hadn’t gone away yet, and that was really frustrating. Standing up would still give me headaches, and blah blah blah. So I was fed up. I basically stood up and said. “I’m hungry. I will eat whatever the heck I want now.” So I went down the street and bought a Shoarma. I ate the whole thing. If Jim wasn’t already dead, I was going to start feeding him to prove a point. I ate my yogurt that I had only dreamed about eating. (I had been avoiding dairy, because it feeds Jim. (“and no more happiness!”, “how true that is”)). I ate it all and it felt good to eat again. The pain went mostly away except a little bit which still persists today.

On Friday, however, we decided to go to the laboratory to get some tests done and make sure that I don’t have a worm. Did you know that it costs 14 lei to poop in a tube? You would think it would be more expensive! They gave me that tube and I almost laughed in their faces. I wanted to say “Do you know what is happening down there? It is a war zone!” I didn’t though. I still haven’t received my results yet, but I have a feeling like they will come back negative. I am feeling much better, and this morning I was able to wake up and exercise again. It was nice.

We taught English class, and we have two new investigators. Simona and John. John is ten years old and SImona is in her forty’s. They called us one day asking about English. They basically said that they want to meet everyday they possibly can until they leave for England in a few months. So, we started teaching them on Friday, and we have a lesson with them tonight. I am really excited to get to know them better and help them. I hope, also, that they will open their hearts to the gospel message. We have been trying to teach the Restoration more, but with me being sick we haven’t been able to set anything up. I hope that this week will be better.