Villegas- Week #84

The Spider Empire Strikes Back !

Hey Family,

Well, just sit back and listen to this one because it was a crazy week. My backspace is broken as well and I already am annoyed with it. P is broken too. So this week went pretty well up until Wednesday. You know how last week I braved the elements and totally slapped Mother Nature in the face by coming out victorious, right? Well if I had to name this week it would be, “Villegas Wars Episode V: The Animal Kingdom Strikes Back!” Or I would call it “Spider-Elder: The Story of when Elder Gilmore was bit by a radioactive spider.” Yes…I now have added to my bag of cool mission stories the time a spider almost took my life. When Peter Parker got bit he acquired cool powers. I did too kind of…basically I could shape shift my foot so that it grew to the size of a watermelon. So like I said, life was good until Wednesday. Tuesday I woke up with what looked like a mosquito bite…what else is new…and I went about my day. When I went to sleep it was a little red, but I figured it was just because of my sock rubbing against it all day. It is on my ankle. Wednesday I wake up and it is an open wound…like bleeding…I figured I scratched it in my sleep or something. I put a band-aid on it, and kept working…you know doing the whole show your faith thing…but something happened at about 3 in the afternoon. It was about a billion degrees outside, and my ankle was throbbing with the pulse of someone who just finished an Iron man competition. I was dying, but we were behind in the work so I kept trucking along without much thought to how serious the situation actually might be. Elder Thomas had no idea because I kept quiet. Well, we make it through the day, and I take my sock of to some horrific extra-terrestrial war zone going on down there. I could no longer see my ankle because of some large reddish puss filled mass that was eating it, or at least covering it up really well. So I called Hermana Benton and explained the situation…she said that I had to go to the hospital…haha. I guess there is some kind of brown recluse spider or something like that, whose venom eats away at the flesh…sounded kind of accurate.

So Thursday morning I headed to the hospital and the doctor gives me a few hmms and hahs and gives me some antibiotics to take, says I can’t walk for two days, and put ice on it. The whole process took about ten minutes. I asked if maybe we should do a skin test or something, because he barely even looked at it. Argentines have socialized healthcare by the way. Some guy came in and said he had a fever…and they took him into the emergency room…take some advil…anyway, right as he was writing out the prescription he asked me if it hurt. Don’t you ask that at the beginning of your evaluation? I said it hurts when I walk, so he also wrote down some pain-killers on the prescription. Haha, what? What kind of painkillers they are I don’t know, but I haven’t taken them because I have heard stories of people who get addicted. So I took the prescription and was about to leave when he says, “Take those for five days, but if it doesn’t get better tomorrow come back.” I just stared at him, wondering if the gift of tongues was playing tricks on me…nope I heard him right. Wouldn’t it get better in a few days after taking the medication? Whatever.

Friday morning President Benton called me and forbid me to leave the apartment when I told him that I was just going to go to the important appointments that day. He thought it was pretty serious. So I ended up staying in the apartment all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday, except for church. President came and visited me personally. He gave me a blessing, which was such a great experience. It was almost a patriarchal blessing, except he didn’t declare lineage. He blessed me to fully recover and that the bite would have no lasting effect on me in my life. I am sending pictures by the way, so don’t call the mission because they already know my condition.

Anyway, as far as the missionary work goes. The Fernandez family is doing really well, but we haven’t been able to do much this week. Our ward mission leader is saving us! He goes around teaching the investigators! It has been a rough week for the work, but we still got quite a bit done while I was out working. We weren’t last in the zone anyway. Not that that matters anyway, but we are going to have to book it with our investigators to get them in the water. We are going to need some miracles. Anyway, I will wrap it up now. I go back to the hospital tomorrow for a checkup, but it is almost healed so I should get the green light to walk again. Alright, love you all!

Spider Elder