Jan. 27th

Well as for my week it has been super crazy. I was going to sugar coat it for you, but then after telling you that I don't like when you sugar coat things I thought maybe it was best if I didn't haha I don't want to be a hypocrite or anything. To start off with, I'm alive and well. Which is apparent or else I wouldn't be writing this haha. Well Monday around 1 in the morning I woke up because my foot was hurting, I found a bump on my ankle and just thought it was a mosquito bite, because that's common (I'm in Brazil haha). During the day it started to swell up which again is normal for a mosquito bite here. They usually swell up to a little bigger than a quarter. I woke up on Tuesday to my ankle being swollen and a deep red forming around the bite. At that point I didn't know what it was, but the other sisters in my apartment assured me that they had the same thing happen to them and that it would go away. So I ignored it. I woke up on Wednesday and my whole foot/ankle was completely swollen, and was turning a blackish purple around the bite mark, and hurt really bad to walk on. We called my mission president and he said that I needed to go to the hospital. So because I'm stubborn we waited until like an hour after lunch. We eventually made it to the hospital though. I sat in the waiting room until 6pm and then finally got to see a doctor. At this point I have a fever. The doctor takes one look at it and says that it's a spider bite, apparently a spider called "aranha marrom" which translates to brown spider so I'm thinking it's a brown recluse. They send me into this other room for me to get an IV. They give me this little yellow pill to take and then a nurse comes over and starts preparing to give me an IV. I'm going to start off by saying that this particular nurse seriously had no clue what she was doing. Well she finds a vein in the crease of my elbow and tries to put the IV in only to mess up, she then tries my wrist and messes that one up, she then stabs my hand and ends up blowing that vein. As she is grabbing my other hand to try that one I start feeling really sick. At this point I have this random pill in my body and I hadn't eaten in over 7 hours and on top of that I have a fever. I start trying to pull my hand away telling her I don't feel good. I seriously thought I was going to throw up. She's still trying to stick my hand when I get a ringing in my ears, and I realize that I am about to pass out. I'm trying to tell her that I don't feel good, but she obviously doesn't understand. Well then I start losing the ability in general to speak and see. All I remember as I'm passing out is that my companion starts freaking out saying my hands are really cold, she's like yelling at me "what happen" in her broken English, and I start crying because I feel horrible. That's all I remember because I passed out after that. According to my companion I started "convulsing" but from how she describes it I think my body was trying to throw up, and then I stopped breathing. She doesn't remember/know much after that because she was too busy freaking out and calling the other sisters that the doctors sent her out of the room. When I finallly regained my consciousness I had a IV in my hand, I was sweating bullets, my hands were completely white and tingling, and I was still crying haha. I survived though. Lets just say that was a traumatizing experience and I never want to go to another hospital here again. Well I stayed home for the next couple of days because A. I couldn't walk & B. the medicine they were having me take made my stomach feel like death. && thennnn right as I was starting to get better around Friday my companion & I got food poisoning from lunch that a member brought to us haha so we were home all weekend as well. We missed church yesterday because my companion still wasn't feeling good. Needless to say we did absolutely nothing this week, and couldn't visit anyone. We are alive and well today though, so I am hoping that we can pick the work back up this week. Because of everything though, we didn't get to visit Rita and Ruan, so they weren't baptized which is unfortunate. We are going to try to check in with them this week though, and see where they are at. Other than that nothing too special happened. I did however read the entire Jesus the Christ during my bed rest. That book is soo amazing, and has truly strengthened my testimony in the work we are doing here. My favorite part though is of course the ministry of Jesus, but how through out the book it talks about how one of Peter's weaknesses is that he would get a little ahead of himself. Jesus would always respond with patience though, even when Peter cut off that mans ear in the Garden of Gethsemane, or when he said he would follow Jesus to death but then denied him three times. Same when he saw Jesus walk on water and he decided he wanted to walk out to him and then again when the resurrected Jesus was on shore and he jumped out of the boat to see him. All these times it was pointed out that one of Peter's weaknesses was his thoughtlessness. Each time though Jesus is soo patient with him. Peter eventually becomes the head apostle after Christ ascends into Heaven and his weakness then becomes his strength. Instead of thinking before hand what to say he preached the gospel to anyone and everyone never thinking about whether or not they would be offended, he just shared his beliefs and testified of Jesus Christ. Christ was so patient with him because he knew his potential. I loved reading about that because we all have weaknesses, but Christ is patient with us. He knows that our weaknesses can be made strengths. He also knows that we aren't going to be perfect right away that it takes a little time to realize the changes we need to make, but he is willing to help us through. It just really reminded me that even though I may have weaknesses the Lord is very aware & is willing to help me turn them into strengths. Let's just say even though I'm not glad I got bit by a spider I am glad I got to read that book, it really strengthened my testimony and the Spirit testified to me that Jesus is the Christ and that this work that I am a part of is so important.