I'm "All Right"

Last monday, I was being dumb as we were leaving the Library from writing you all and I stood too close to the car as I was backing Elder England. The car bumped me as I was planning on it doing as Elder England was checking the front end, but then it did something I wasn't expecting: the back tire decided to take a little trip up over my big toe and onto my arch on my left foot. It was there that Elder England parked the car and only moved forward when he saw my frantic gestures in the side mirror. I hobbled around on the foot the rest of the day just thinking I had bruised up my toe. The next day brought pain to more parts of my foot. Yet, in that same dumb mind that thought it was smart to stand close to the car came the new dumb thought of not getting it checked out and expecting it to just go away. By Wednesday night, when it had not gone away but had gotten worse, I called Sister Jergensen. She told me to get ahold of our Branch President who's a doctor and have him check it out. I called him and left a message, and by noon on Thursday he had arranged for me to get an X-Ray. But before I could go in for that I had to get approval from Mission Medical through Sister Jergensen. I called or texted Sister Jergensen a couple times throughout the day on Thursday, but due to meetings I didn't hear from her until that night. By that point she just told me to go in the next day, which I did as soon as I could. There at the clinic I walked up and told them who I was and they checked me in and soon had me X-Rayed. Yet as the X-Rays were finishing up a new person walked in, informing the nurse that there was some confusion at the front desk (they hadn't even asked for my insurance card). There at the desk they started asking me questions (more like an interrogation). They listed off an address and asked if that was mine. I thought for a second, as it was some foreign address, wondering if that was mission medical or the old Illinois Peoria Mission address or the branch president's address...wait, why do they even have my address...? Meanwhile, as I thought, the people got more and more curious looks on their faces. They then asked my social security number. I couldn't remember that for the life of me. They then asked our phone number, which I couldn't remember either. They quickly realized I was not the person they had signed me in under, and then asked me if i had even had an appointment with the Doctor that's our branch president, which I hadn't. Altogether, a plethora of red flags were raised to everyone present. The nurse or radiologist or whoever it was that checked my foot informed them that she hadn't yet gotten the X-Ray's processed. I quickly realized just how abnormal my visit there was, and how they must not understand in the slightest what was up. They had me fill out a new patient form and they got a copy of my missionary insurance card and I was on my way. I even offered to pay a copay but apparently I didn't need to. By saturday late afternoon I still had not heard from our branch president, and I was getting anxious just sitting around keeping my foot elevated to reduce the swelling that was going on, when finally I called him. He informed me that he had not yet received the X-Rays nor the Radiologist's examination of them, but to keep off my foot and keep it elevated in the mean time. This is also what sister jergensen had told me, and if you don't know already, keeping off a foot and keeping it elevated is nigh impossible as a missionary. But I got crutches on friday and have been using those since, and while I was uncertain at first, I'm pretty good at them now. Even sunday morning our Branch President still had not gotten the X-Rays, and I'm starting to think that it may be possible that due to the absurdity of my visit, the people in Radiology had either never done anything with them or chucked them. So, yeah, still not sure what's wrong with my foot. I can walk on the balls of it, but that starts to hurt over time, and my big toe hurts to use much, but my heal I can't use at all without considerable pain. It's all pretty much swollen, but not too much so, but the only place of good bruising is underneath by big toe nail.

It's crazy to hear that the weather is changing so much in WA. Here in MO it's starting to get a lot colder, and that all started as I was sick the other week. It's still not as cold as it usually is. Usually by now the first snow has come. Today is very windy, though. The fall here in MO was very pretty with all of the trees (yes, there are trees here, not just corn and soy fields).

This week we picked up a new investigator. She lives in one of the government housing areas here in town. She's one that we had tracted into awhile back but had only really tried checking up on her once before this week. She actually ended up being pretty awesome and during our first appointment just started reading the Book of Mormon on the spot and was too indulged to be much use to try to teach at that point. We've taught her three times now, the first time being Wednesday. Sunday she actually came to church! But she was so scared, being used to All-Black Churches, where apparently people spend the whole time gossiping about you and never care to actually be courteous and shake each others hands. She came in late to sacrament meeting, staying out in the foyer, and left early, but in that small amount of time it made an awesome impact. She got to see the sacrament, got warmly welcomed by the few members who came into the hallway with handshakes and whispered greetings and smiles, and the talks she heard seemed, at least to her, to be directed towards her. She couldn't believe it! We went over after church and she was still the happiest we'd ever seen her and all excited about this new-found, gregarious congregation! To all congenial mormons everywhere, thank you for making this church great. We tried to set a baptismal date with her on sunday but she was nervous about that and then got into one of those The Projects Yelling Matches you always hear about, so we left.

Another of our investigators ended up with her ailing father in the hospital, which got her reasonably upset. She invited us out to see him thursday night, and apparently it made his night, and he still talks about it. All we really did was come in and sit there and told him about my foot, but apparently that made a major impact on him, and our investigator has asked us to stop by again! Another door opens!

As for Thanksgiving, we have two meal appointments, one with a member in the evening and one with an investigator. It's incredible to us that we have four amazing investigators, all who love us and two of whom are personally working towards baptism and the other two doing great as well. No dates yet, but that will change shortly!

It's crazy to us how fast this transfer is going, and all the great things happening, despite all the things going wrong with me!
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"As for myself, I am an optimist. It doesn't seem very much use being anything else." -Winston Churchill
Elder Charlie Gates