Mauri!

This week has been one of the longest and strangest of my life. After my last email not much happened until Sunday when we had our devotional, when Donny Osmond spoke...To quote Elder Mann (who I have been able to talk to quite a bit which has been cool) "he talked about missionary work, the Gospel and Donny Osmond" and the order is not indicative of the amount of time he spent on each.

So I have my companion who doesn't speak much English, and I was feeling pretty selfish and asking why no one seemed to understand that I don't speak Tongan so companion study is pretty much impossible, especially because he doesn't seem to like doing it. And then we watched Elder Bednar's "character of Christ"devotional where he said pretty bluntly to stop whining and asking for pity,and then said "who cares what you want for your mission", its not about what I want,but what the Lord wants for it. So that was pretty straightforward... I'm still not fully following that counsel, I am still selfish, but we can chalk that up to being human and this being the first week in the MTC. 

and now to the strange part:

A sister in our zone who has been here for about 4 weeks has been sick the entire time with some stomach issues that the doctors can't figure out.And she is from Tonga. So you guessed it, about Monday morning, my companion's stomach started to hurt,and on Tuesday night, we were in the ER because his stomach hurt so bad- for 5 hours. We brought the other sister who has the same sickness to translate and her companion, who is actually from Kiribati, so I talked to her about Kiribati, and she knows Elder Openshaw (her name is Sister Beria). So they did a CT scan and an ultrasound and found nothing wrong, just like the sister with the same stomach problems. So we went back to the MTC, and my comp said he was too sick to go to class, so we stayed in the room until exercise time, at which point he said he wanted to go watch volleyball. So his idea of watching is playing, I learned. I then told him that if he would play volleyball he could go to class, but we haven't been to class since or volleyball because he threw up blood that night,and then again the following night. So he had a procedure to check his stomach, involving him drinking a large cleansing solution the night before (like 2 gallons)- that was fun tottry to get him to drink it- he got pretty mad at one point- luckily some elders had received some packages and they came back to put them away so they helped me.

Anyway, he is still sick, and they found nothing during the procedure which was yesterday (which is why I am emailing today).

We still made it to the temple while Elder Ma was recovering in sick bay. But all in all I think I have missed like 5 classes (15 hours) and at least one investigator lesson. 

Now Elder Ma will be going home and getting better, at which point he will be recommended to return on his mission once he is better by his stake president.  He is pretty bummed and still in pain.

I don't know what the record is for the fastest a missionary has managed to lose his companion, but I think I am in the running. He says there is a Tongan traditional medicine that will cure him, so hopefully he gets better.

That's been my week.

Tia bo!

Elder Farner