Buen dia!

Hola!!!

I don´t have a lot of time, so this email won´t be too exciting. We are taking the subway to a super capital part of Buenos Aires called Polermo and going to be adventuring over there for the rest of Pday! So I will have sweet pics next week. 

My companion had food poisoning for a couple days...I guess we just need to take turns with sicknesses?! But with challenges, comes miracles!and we saw that this week! We have 2 baptisms set for this weekend. FINALLY! This area hasnt had a legit (long story) baptism since this area has been opened (it´s been over a year). People say it´s a difficult area, but we´re seeing the fruits from all the work...have to keep the faith high! We´re getting our investigators pumped for the weekend and they are doing great! 

Quick funny story....I still get confused about the houses here. Some people have their own houses, but sometimes they open the door and there´s a long outdoor hallway that has other doors that actually go to other houses. A lot of families live together. So we went to an opened gate that led to people´s houses and a lady told us to walk through the gate and find the door we were looking for. The door we were looking for was opened too, I just saw a concrete wall, so I thought it was another passage way to their house. So I walk in and see a lightswitch (i thought it was a doorbell). So I started pushing the "doorbell" and calling for the name we were looking for...and the lights starting flickering...I realized WE WERE IN SOMEONE´S HOUSE! Let me tell ya, it didn´t look like we were in someone´s house from where I was standing! May sound silly, but there´s areas with super weird building structures haha. Shesh, we´re creeps! 

Next week is transfers, so I will be emailing on Tuesday instead. 99% chance my companion will be leaving and I will stay in Lugano. It´s true when they say your companions will always be your close friends! I´m super lucky I had such a cool trainer and that we kept laughing and a smile on our faces for the 3 months we have been working together. It´s been a blast! 

Well I have one new picture......our pension now looks like a labratory with pictures of my brain. Lol! Our landlord thought it was pretty great :) But I will have lots more next week!!! We will be taking pictures of our area this week. Have a great week, I love you all!! 

Chau!

Slumber party

I had a 3 day slumber party at the hospital...it was one of the weirdest experiences ever and I still don´t quite understand everything that happened. I´m going to attempt to explain it without writing a novel haha, because there are like a million things that were weird about the experience. 

As I said last week, the mission doctor told me to try a strong pill to try to get rid of the migraine, he said usually it works best at the start of the migraine, but I had already had it for 9 days at that point. It didn't work. I could barely sit up for more than like 5 minutes, was super sensitive to light, throbbing, dizziness, nausousness, and all that fun stuff. Stuff I had NEVER experienced before. On Tuesday, the mission doctor told me to go to the hospital again. Really confusing and I kind of explained this last week, but the first time I went the doctor was certain it was a sinus infection, which made no sense at all. The medication didn´t work. The second time, a different doctor thought I had hit my head and had a concussion and tested for internal bleeding. Once he saw I wasn´t internally bleeding he gave me an antiinflammatory and pain meds and said if it didnt work, to come back. They didn´t work. So this time I went to the doctor, he was a little crazy and thought it was some type of other headache and wanted to inject me with medicine....I said no lol. He told me to go buy a pill and sit outside for an hour and see how it goes. After sitting outside for an hour, he came outside and told me a neourologist would come because I was still in pain. The neourologist took me back and did a couple tests and told me I had to stay overnight. I didn´t want to and she said legally she had to keep me there. All of a sudden 5 nurses and doctors came in and put me on a bed and started hooking my legs, arms, stomach, and chest up to wires and did a little shocking thing (I had never seen that machine in my life). The kicked my companion out and told her to do my papers and started taking tubes of blood and xrays. I was SO confused and they didnt want me talking (the nurses on that floor werent too nice to me haha...). I tried sending out a help text but the phone died haha. My companion finally found a way to get in and we finally left a voicemail on a different phone to tell the mission president that we were staying. They took me up to a different floor where I was going to spend the next few days. They hooked me up to an IV bag and gave me a couple injections. They told me the IV bag was for "preparation for the MRI that night" and that I would get the pain killers the next day. One thing....I did NOT want to fall asleep, so I asked if the injections would make me fall asleep..he said no, and as soon as he gave them to me I felt super nausous and went to sleep. At 1am, a man pushed me in a wheelchair to my MRI...it was the weirdest thing. He put a cage mask over me and put me in a super tiny tunnel and told me I would be there for 30 minutes. It ended up being 1 hour. The MRI was SUPER loud sounds for an hour...it was so loud! I just kept my eyes closed so I wouldn´t think about being in a tiny tunnel haha. After they brought me back they hooked me up to the IV again even though they told me it was just for "preparation" and then gave me more injections throughout the night. They kept saying the injections were to "clean out the tube" or for "antibiotics", and that made no sense to me. I woke up to 2 neurologists and told them I felt fine. They were still acting like I never got the treatment and said I had to stay another day just to observe. The mission president came and asked the neurologist for the truth....my companion and I werent too happy! They said they didnt want me to know about anything they were given me because they didnt want me to fight against it because of fear I was tolerant to it all. That´s not even possible! They told me they wouldnt give me anything else....so I wanted to take the tubes out of my hand and they said no. That night...they hooked me up to another IV and gave me 3 more injections. I STILL have no idea what happened....the whole thing was just a bunch of lies, it was so crazy! 

They said they don´t know what happened, but they said it´s common in young girls to get these kinds of migraines. The only problem was that I kept working with it for 8 days, and ended up having it for 12 days. She said it got so bad that the only way to help was to stay at the hospital. It made me a little bummed though because if the doctors would have just helped me correctly in the first place, maybe none of that would have happened. I never take medicine and so I was pretty bummed that they gave me sedatives and meds like I was the hulk and fed me like a 90 year old lil lady HAHA. I have never had a migraine before and she said most likely I wont have anything like that happen again. All the tests came back normal :) So there is my long story made short. She said that whatever they put in my body will stay with me for 3 more weeks though...and I can definitely feel it. 

But everything is great! I´m happy and healthy haha. I can´t even describe over email how crazy and weird it was. At first I´ll admit I was pretty scared, especially with how they did everything and made my companion leave. But my companion and I still had a good time and were laughing through a lot of it. And we still laugh about how crazy it was. It is seriously mind boggling to me what happened, I don´t understand! They still NEVER told me what they did. Haha...but I guess I just needed to know I´m okay now :D 

There´s always good that comes from trials though! My mission president and his wife came and hung out with me, Hermanas brought me Mcdonalds (which is super expensive and the nicest thing here lol), my spanish vocabulary grew out of need to figure out everything that was going on, I have like 7 posters of my brain, and I´m healthy. My companion is super awesome too...although she had to sleep on chairs for 2 nights and sit in a room with me forever, we still made it fun! I was thinking about a quote from Thomas S. Monson while I was there."We are not placed on this earth to walk alone...God has assured us that He will be there for us to provide help if we but ask...I promise you that you will one day stand aside and look at your difficult times, and you will realize that He was always there beside you." Just knowing that the Lord is ALWAYS walking by ourside it the greatest comfort! Having that knowledge can brighten up any trial. He knows us and knows what we are going through and how to help. 

Well...sorry that this email is all about the hospital, I didnt mean to make it so long, there´s just so much to it! I will have more exciting stuff to share next week :) I hope you all have a wonderful week! Love you all tons!!!! 

My neck is red because I had an allergic reaction to whatever they were giving me..... They had to give me a shot for it lol. I was pretty bruised up all over my body, but it's still a cute pic of my awesome President and and his wife ha.

My awesome companion

Hospital

Not a ton of exciting news this week because I´ve been sick, so this email will be a little lame haha. First time having to go to the hospital ever is in Argentina lol. I had to go twice...but all will be well. Let me just say hospitals in a 3rd world country that has "free" healthcare (i dont know how that works exactly) is REALLY different. I had a bad headache 2 Fridays ago and things kind of just went downhill from there, it´s been 11 days. I kept working and walking tons and just felt super nauseoso, had a migraine, and became really sensitive to light. After 8 days, I said something to President´s wife and she told me to go to the hospital to get stronger meds.

The hospital was super crowded and loud. Within the first 5 minutes of being there I saw security taking a drunk guy out. They put me in a tiny waiting room with like 10 other sick people and we waited for hours. And this is the "emergency room". Once I got into the doctors, he thought I had a sinus infection....with no runny nose or anything...weird. So he gave me pain meds and they did nothing to me. I pretty much laid down in the dark all day the next day because I felt super sick every time I stood up or looked into the light (stayed in my bat cave)...it was a test of my patience, because I hate being indoors all day haha...I was a little stir crazy. 

Sunday, I called the mission doctor and he told me to go to the hospital again. He said I needed narcodics but they´re nearly impossible to get here because a lot of drug addicts try to get them at the hospital. It was a little difficult to explain how I felt in spanish...so I was acting a lot of it out. They did a catscan to see if I was internally bleeding. He gave me 2 kinds of different medications and said if I didnt feel better from them, then I would need to see a specialist today with more extensive cat scans. So...the medicine didnt work.......I called the doctor and he wants me to try a strong migraine medication today and we will see how that goes. 4 Elders (my whole district) came to our pension this morning and gave me a blessing, I do feel a little better, I can actually email, but it was no fun walking over here. But according to the mission doctor, it´s just a migraine and I should feel better after this medication.

I NEVER use to take medicine, and now my body is acting like I´m taking a bunch of tic tacs lol.....all should be okay though. No worries. I´m good enough to walk down here and write. Nothing to complain about, just a trial! Still super happy, loving the mission and I have a super awesome companion to chill with...although it just consists of us talking in the dark now....lol. 

But hey, I have my SD card now!!! Pictures!!!! 

I hope you all have a great week! 

I sent this picture (with the green redneck grocery bag gloves)  because I was cleaning our moldy, bug infested bathroom...... and I didn't want to touch any of it haha. It was a pretty gross job!

Juanpi

Hola!!!!

This week was awesome, I loved it!!! I feel like there´s so much to say because I wasnt able to email last week, but I´ll have to say some of it next week because of time. 

Things were a lil crazy last week, so I wasn´t able to email. Last week was crazy haha. I won´t go into too much detail, but my companion and I were completely broke haha. Some things happened that led her to have no money and me to only have enough to support us a few days. Shouldnt happen again, just was a weird week. We just laughed at the 4 pesos (about 40 cents) we had left and just had to laugh at how poor we were haha. We ate all the rice from the emergency food, and had absolutely nothing else on the shelves or fridge for days haha. Somehow though, we kept ending up with food. We have an amigo named Hugo (he was the American Olymic soccer coach and a former pro soccer player and now owned a hot dog shop while waiting to coach for Argentina, pretty cool, right?). We have tried sharing the gospel with him, but he is going to stick with his faith right now. He knows that missionaries are called of God and is grateful that we are praying for his wife and has a high respect for missionaries. As we were walking past his shop one day, he asked if we had food. I´ll save the details, but he told us we can eat there free anytime. Super nice man and I´m sure the Lord is blessing him for helping out His missionaries. 

Another time, we went to a shop that was owned by an inactive, and she looked me up and down and then got her lil candies and some cereal and gave it to us. Hah.......oh dear. As we were walking down the street right after, an elderly woman begged for our candy, so it didnt last long, but it was still nice :)

Stuff kept happening like that though last week....we would be completely broke and then brought back up by someone being nice to us. Tender mercies :)  No worries though, we are all good now haha. The only reason why I mention it is because I´ll admit it´s pretty funny, and there are a lot of kind people :) 

I hope you all had a great Easter! Such a great time of the year! Conference was great :) The stake all watches it in the stake center here. Saturday I had to watch it in spanish which was kind of a bummer, but I was able to understand the parts I felt I needed to hear. I was able to watch the Sunday morning session in english with other native english speakers, we were all crammed in a lil room, but I was grateful for it. They didnt allow us to watch it in English for the second session because they needed more wifi because there were technical difficulties for a lot of it. But it was really good! I know that we can all receive answers by listening to conference. Also, the speaker, Jorge E Zeballos spoke at our mission conference last month. He´s super awesome. 

Last week was Holy Week (celebrated by catholics). Saw a lot of interesting things, but it was just sad to see that so many people were celebrating the death of Christ and not the resurrection. We need Easter to reflect on the Resurrection of Christ and The Atonement :) 

I HAVE to tell a funny story.....I´m sure it won´t be the same over email, but it makes me cry because of how funny it is :`D We were looking through a folder to find more people to go for and we see a man´s name Juanpi (say it like Juan-pee lol). We were just hoping that it was his real name and that someone didnt just hear him wrong. The next day we went to the address and this interesting man opens the door and asks who we´re looking for. "We´re looking for Juanpi?" and he said "Juanpi??? What?? I know I´m fat but you dont have to call me that!" My companion was trying to explain that this is the address we received for Juanpi, and he´s like No there´s no Jaunpi that lives here. I couldnt even talk because I was biting my lip trying not to laugh because of how many times they were saying "Juanpi". But not just that... His shirt was only halfway buttoned up and had his bushel of chest hair was sprawling out, and there was CHUNKS OF BREAD in it. Not just crumbs...there were chunks LOL. My eyes were watery and I kept "coughing" because I was trying not to laugh at everything that was going on. I´m super bad at holding in my laughs. My companion related it to the bible story by saying Juanpi is going to feed the 5000 with the bread from his chest. I promise the story is alot funnier in person, it´s hard to explain it on here, but we bring up our Juanpi story every day and laugh till we cry. 

I still dont have the SD card reader, so no pictures this week, but crossing fingers for next week! Well, it has been a great week, and I´m ready for another one! I hope you all have a great week as well. I love you!