Just another week of dengue

Cool river we found in our area . . .We took this over three weeks ago.

Christmas!!! Thanks for all the cool stuff

From my side on Christmas day

Our blood results when it said we have dengue

Guajaba.  One of my favorite fruits.  The Elders brought it to me and I was so
happy. My comp said it looks gross. haha.  She wouldn't try it.

My mosquito net.  haha

I thought maybe I would explain a little more about my symptoms from the dengue because a lot of people asked me about what it has been like. The first few days I had a high fever, my body just hurt all over. I had a bad headache so for the first few days we literally just laid in bed all day sleeping, we didn’t even want to eat. New Year’s Eve my comp slept literally 24 hours and only woke up to throw up. I also slept almost 24 with occasional breaks to eat and pee and read some BOM and then back to sleep. I have never slept so much in my life. Honestly, it just takes everything you got from you, and we didn’t have any energy. Sometimes people would come with medicine or food and our house is on the second floor so we have to go down this big staircase to open the door. Every time we went down so slow and I would get really dizzy. We had to do it like little old women, one step at a time holding tight to the railing. But the worst of it was really just Sunday and Monday. After that I would start feeling really good and start cleaning the house (because with two sickies the house gets bad) and fixing up our area book. Then it would all come back, not really the pain, just the tiredness and I would have to take a nap again. So really last week when I wrote you I felt perfectly fine I just still got tired if we did too much. After writing last week we went and got all our food and by the time we got home we were spent. We slept all afternoon. Tuesday we went to our district meeting and we were telling all the elders ya we’re all better now, we can leave the house now. They were like “Are you sure? You still look kind of pale….” But we didn’t want to hear it. After the meeting we went to our doctor who told us that our white bloods cells were still down so we couldn’t leave the house, come back Wednesday. So we thought Wednesday for sure we would have permission to leave the house, Wednesday came and he told us, “No sisters, you are not up to it just yet. Come back Friday. After many prayers Friday came and guess what? He told us…. Monday again… so here we are Monday again and he told us that we can start to leave little by little….

He is so funny. We are trying to do everything he says but it’s impossible. He didn’t even want us to go to church the last two weeks but our mission president gave us permission. We also got permission to go to visit a family on Saturday that we have been working with. Remember the one that didn’t have water and we helped them out on Christmas. Well, they are called the familia Mercado. They are so awesome. One of the sons is a recent convert and the whole family is pretty inactive. But we have been working really hard with them and little by little they have opened up to us. They have a son who was in jail but now wants to change his life and he isn’t a member. His name is Lorenzo and he went to church the day that dengue started to get bad. Then we didn’t visit them the whole first week of dengue and they all still went to church and the dad even went. Then this last week the son got really sick with dengue… everyone’s got it ….so the mom and him couldn’t go to church but the dad still went this Sunday with all the little kids. We cried when we saw him in sacrament meeting. He was baptized a long time ago and has been inactive for a long time as well. We noticed that he and his wife weren’t in the ward list so we called the office and they looked into it and it turns out the mom is a registered member but the dad’s records were lost… So after two weeks straight of being stuck in the house we have a baptism this week for the dad of this awesome family!!!! I’m so excited. We are going to reactivate the whole family. It’s been really cool to see the change in this family. I love them a lot.

So as far as dengue goes I just know what they tell me that there isn’t a cure for dengue but it can be really dangerous if you don’t rest properly because you start feeling good and go out and then you start to bleed inside. That’s what they tell me. But there are so many other people who live here and they have it for a few days and then the next day they are out playing and being normal but I guess not everyone walks as much as we do either. The area doctor told our president that this can take months to completely go away and the danger is that you get bit again and then it’s way worse… but honestly we did everything they asked of us and they can’t really keep us in the house much longer. But I feel great and ready to work and I’m excited about this baptism! We also have transfers this week; this change went by so fast. I am praying my comp doesn’t leave. That will be really sad and crazy for me. Pray we don’t get changed…. I am…..

Hasta la vista, hahah

Hermana Ball