As a little kid in my house, if we did something wrong, we were sent to time out. We had to sit and think about what we did wrong and feel bad...but as usual, and as a little kid, we got impatient and we'd start to cry out, "Can I come out now?!". Usually? The answer was no. What did we have to learn? Patience...#foreverlearningpatience. But we were always allowed to come down from those horrible, uncomfortable stairs (but now I look at it and remember there was carpet on the stairs and it seems like heaven). So in the end, we were always able to come out of "time out" and return to the table, return to the game, or whatever it was...but this week I found myself asking Heavenly Father almost the same question..."Can I be healed now?"
Not much happened this week seeing as where we had to stay in the house since Wednesday pretty much. After lots of calls and messages to the enfermeras, and casually asking members, I found out I have shingles. Talk about the most painful thing in my life. If you've ever thought about getting shingles....don’t think about it, cuz you don’t want it. I felt like a leper. I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to sleep again for a solid two hours because the pain was so bad. I've been on ibuprofen and a certain medication for like 5 days straight. I felt like I would start needing to breathe differently because the pain would just like shoot through my body at random times. It was the worst! Let's just say with more than 150 blisters on one side of my body does not make it a comfy thing to try and sleep...but my companion was the best through it all! She was so sweet and always asking how I was, reminding me when I needed to take my medicine and bringing me lollipops and distracting me with "Uno" at 10:30 at night.
One afternoon I was just so tired of not knowing what the heck was wrong with me and I was in pain and I just sat on the floor in front of the fan in our kitchen/desk area. I started to cry and she came and put her arms around me. She is such a blessing. But I was writing my little brother a letter and talked a bit about how I was feeling and how sometimes I felt like the pain and sickness would never go away. It was scary cuz I didn’t know much about what I had, it wasn’t just a little cold or something...I told him, "but I know it won’t last forever, but what does last forever is God's love for us". So it could apply to lots of things, school, a challenging assignment at work, an argument with a friend, missionary life, or health problems...it won’t last forever! But we do know God's love will last forever. Not everything will happen in our time and we'll find ourselves asking, "Can I graduate now? Can it be 2015 now? Can I be healed now?" But all in the Lord's time, and He will always love us.
But on a brighter note, we went to Tela today! So the week wasn’t all bad! It wasn’t as hot today so that probably means it was like in the low 90's or something. But me and my comp manned up and we played volleyball with all the Elders for a solid hour and a half. So thank goodness I healed up pretty fast! Haha...it was a lot of fun and we saw some jellyfish too! Love Tela, super pretty. Last Sunday night we did all we could to try and find new people, visit current investigators, everything...but there was no one, so we headed into the house a little early. Of course we always feel bad. But the next night we didn’t feel too badly about it when we found out that on the corner, the gunshots we had heard that night came from a driver that was angry with a security guard because he had asked him to roll down his window. Sounds like he just shot them into the air, but that made me think that sometimes, we're not necessarily meant to be out right until the very last minute, that maybe Heavenly Father is protecting us.
La Centroamericana has been flooding out because of the downpours we've gotten...the rio Uhlua that borders our area has flooded a lot because of more rains like in Choluteca and Tegucigalpa, so that comes into our area and sends lots of people out of their homes. So we've been calling some of the members checking up on them. Earlier in the week when we could leave the house we saw Hermana G_____ walking out of their little "apartment complex" area or "cuarteria" and she was literally wading through water...but was she mad or frustrated? No, she was laughing and joking with a huge smile on her face. Now let’s keep in mind this water has trash, dog poop, spit, everything in it and she was still happy as ever, she could have been walking through candy! It was pretty interesting. But the rains definitely seemed to affect who was in church, because none of our investigators with fecha (a baptismal date) from that area came to church. So it looks like we won’t be having any baptisms for at least a week more...
It was nice to get more rest in, but honestly I just started to feel like a useless slug lying there in bed with a ton of blisters covered in calomine lotion. It will be nice to
get out and work again. . I read an article for the second time in a
Liahona called
"Good Things Keep on Coming". I had read it a few months back and just loved it. It's super positive and I feel like I can relate sometimes, looking back at friends and wondering where they are now, what everyone chose to do with their lives...but then to remind myself, that good things keep on coming. The Lord's love is always there. There are some things in life that don't necessarily have to change every second, or every 6 weeks or every year and a half. It's scary to think that changes are just next week, considering this change was only 4 weeks. I'm hoping and praying I don’t have changes. I LOVE being with my companion. We work well together. We laugh and cry together and we're honestly best friends. It's amazing how that can work between cultures and languages and countries...it's like it’s a miracle or something.
Love, Hermana Despain
