Happy late Fourth of July!
I hope you all had a good one. I hope all the fires out in Colorado are out, but I don’t know because I don’t hear anything like that down here haha. My Fourth of July was well… a little different than usual. So this week started off really well. On Monday President Ruiz sat down with each of us in the office and went over what we each do as part of our work. So I had a good talk with him about finances and going over monthly reports and a ton of fun stuff like that, but he did give me some great advice of what we could do better in our financial system. Back in Panama, he ran a private college, so he is pretty savvy with all of the business stuff which will be a huge help to me. He also likes being pretty strict and punctual which I have really enjoyed because the Latino culture is super laid back to the point where everything is late, and missionaries are really lose on the rules. That’s why with President Ruiz coming in and bringing some new excitement and strictness I'm pretty happy.
So it was a pretty usual week, working and getting to know President better as well as going around with him to meet the missionaries and everything. We’ve also started going to a somewhat decent gym we found, and so I had been feeling better working out again, but also incredibly sore. Then on the fourth of July after we got back from the gym, I started to feel pretty crappy. It just progressively got worse throughout the morning and I felt feverish and with a giant headache so I went and laid down to rest a little bit. A little while later Elder Yergensen comes and tells me that there is a truck outside the office with 30 beds and bases we had ordered for new missionaries that are coming into the mission, and that we had to go move them into a storage place we have. So Elder Yergensen and I, the feverish, sore, sick feeling elder went to this storage place and we moved all the beds and bases into it. It was just loads of fun and I was pretty much dead afterwards. I just kept feeling horrible, and so finally someone called President and he took me to the hospital where I found out I had Dengue Fever. You can go look it up on google, but basically it’s a disease carried by the mosquitoes here, and it causes fever, headache, muscle pain, upset stomach, diarrhea and just all the fun stuff. So I had a Guatemalan doctor try to find my vein for half an hour before injecting me with who knows what while I'm just chilling in a sketchy Guatemalan hospital that makes hospitals in the states seem like you are going to the Broadmoor haha. Anyway, president was helping me out and everything during all that, talk about a president/missionary bonding activity, and he took me to get some pills and back to the office. Then the other Latino elders decided that they were going to eat dinner with a member family that night, and since I couldn’t be alone I had to go with. It was the most awkward/worst dinner with a family ever because I was dead the whole time, feeling like complete crap and I didn’t even eat anything while this whole family was sitting there watching me suffer. Dumbest thing ever haha. So pretty much the past couple of days have not been the best as I have just been getting over Dengue Fever, but now I'm feeling a ton better and I didn’t die so you don’t have to worry mom! At least I have some cool stories to tell now of being in a Guatemalan hospital and getting infected by a tropical disease, that’s pretty cool. Oh and now I am super grateful for the nurses in the states that can get shots into your vein the first time!
Yeah so basically I spent my Fourth of July sick, so I'm pretty sure anything you all did was better than that. Other than all that, I have been studying the talk Curt sent me. It’s really awesome and I have been thinking a lot about what I want to get out of the mission. Being almost at my year mark I have been thinking a lot about what I’ve gained in the past year, and where I want to be in another. There are a lot of personal goals I have and I want to achieve, but from experience I know it’s going to be a long hard road to get there, but that’s why I really liked the quote Curt shared with me. We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day. I’ve kind of taken that to heart for this next year in my mission. I have an idea of who I want to be, but because I'm not perfect and I make mistakes, I'm not going to get there overnight. But by making the decision, and acting like who I want to be, little by little I am going to arrive there. It’s something that really struck me, and thanks curt for your insight on that.
Thanks for all the emails and thoughts and feelings of everything that is going on. Sorry I don’t have time to respond personally to everyone, but I do learn from them and am very thankful for them. It’s crazy how many people are leaving on missions now, everyone younger than me haha, just kind of strange. Be sure to wish Micheal Claflin and Mathew Lindley hi before they head out!
Les quiero y amo mucho!
Elder Henderson
P.S. Here are some pictures from the office!
1. Me in my working environment
2. The office
3. Elder Yergensen
I hope you all had a good one. I hope all the fires out in Colorado are out, but I don’t know because I don’t hear anything like that down here haha. My Fourth of July was well… a little different than usual. So this week started off really well. On Monday President Ruiz sat down with each of us in the office and went over what we each do as part of our work. So I had a good talk with him about finances and going over monthly reports and a ton of fun stuff like that, but he did give me some great advice of what we could do better in our financial system. Back in Panama, he ran a private college, so he is pretty savvy with all of the business stuff which will be a huge help to me. He also likes being pretty strict and punctual which I have really enjoyed because the Latino culture is super laid back to the point where everything is late, and missionaries are really lose on the rules. That’s why with President Ruiz coming in and bringing some new excitement and strictness I'm pretty happy.
So it was a pretty usual week, working and getting to know President better as well as going around with him to meet the missionaries and everything. We’ve also started going to a somewhat decent gym we found, and so I had been feeling better working out again, but also incredibly sore. Then on the fourth of July after we got back from the gym, I started to feel pretty crappy. It just progressively got worse throughout the morning and I felt feverish and with a giant headache so I went and laid down to rest a little bit. A little while later Elder Yergensen comes and tells me that there is a truck outside the office with 30 beds and bases we had ordered for new missionaries that are coming into the mission, and that we had to go move them into a storage place we have. So Elder Yergensen and I, the feverish, sore, sick feeling elder went to this storage place and we moved all the beds and bases into it. It was just loads of fun and I was pretty much dead afterwards. I just kept feeling horrible, and so finally someone called President and he took me to the hospital where I found out I had Dengue Fever. You can go look it up on google, but basically it’s a disease carried by the mosquitoes here, and it causes fever, headache, muscle pain, upset stomach, diarrhea and just all the fun stuff. So I had a Guatemalan doctor try to find my vein for half an hour before injecting me with who knows what while I'm just chilling in a sketchy Guatemalan hospital that makes hospitals in the states seem like you are going to the Broadmoor haha. Anyway, president was helping me out and everything during all that, talk about a president/missionary bonding activity, and he took me to get some pills and back to the office. Then the other Latino elders decided that they were going to eat dinner with a member family that night, and since I couldn’t be alone I had to go with. It was the most awkward/worst dinner with a family ever because I was dead the whole time, feeling like complete crap and I didn’t even eat anything while this whole family was sitting there watching me suffer. Dumbest thing ever haha. So pretty much the past couple of days have not been the best as I have just been getting over Dengue Fever, but now I'm feeling a ton better and I didn’t die so you don’t have to worry mom! At least I have some cool stories to tell now of being in a Guatemalan hospital and getting infected by a tropical disease, that’s pretty cool. Oh and now I am super grateful for the nurses in the states that can get shots into your vein the first time!
Yeah so basically I spent my Fourth of July sick, so I'm pretty sure anything you all did was better than that. Other than all that, I have been studying the talk Curt sent me. It’s really awesome and I have been thinking a lot about what I want to get out of the mission. Being almost at my year mark I have been thinking a lot about what I’ve gained in the past year, and where I want to be in another. There are a lot of personal goals I have and I want to achieve, but from experience I know it’s going to be a long hard road to get there, but that’s why I really liked the quote Curt shared with me. We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day. I’ve kind of taken that to heart for this next year in my mission. I have an idea of who I want to be, but because I'm not perfect and I make mistakes, I'm not going to get there overnight. But by making the decision, and acting like who I want to be, little by little I am going to arrive there. It’s something that really struck me, and thanks curt for your insight on that.
Thanks for all the emails and thoughts and feelings of everything that is going on. Sorry I don’t have time to respond personally to everyone, but I do learn from them and am very thankful for them. It’s crazy how many people are leaving on missions now, everyone younger than me haha, just kind of strange. Be sure to wish Micheal Claflin and Mathew Lindley hi before they head out!
Les quiero y amo mucho!
Elder Henderson
P.S. Here are some pictures from the office!
1. Me in my working environment
2. The office
3. Elder Yergensen
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