So check it. We left our house on Friday and it was a totally normal-feeling day. In fact, I was feeling pretty good. But as we started visiting people I came to realize that this was FAR from a normal day. We first visited a family who seemed pretty down. We asked them what was up, and they explained that a lady had just died that they were super close too. Now the odd thing about this was that this woman was completely healthy. She was maybe 60 and she exercised well every day. But she had to go in for knee surgery this week, and in order to make the surgery as not traumatic as possible they induced a temporary coma. The surgery went well, and they did whatever procedure you do to wake someone up from a coma, and it didn't work. She wasn't coming out of the induced coma! And she never did. She stopped breathing, for 45 whole minutes, and when they got her to start again the doctors declared she was brain-dead and without warning her husband was asked to choose to put her on life support or let her go, but either way it was over. Wow, it was such a sad deal. The whole town is in shambles over it, 'cause she was an elementary school teacher that every single kid had and they all loved her. So sad.
We then found out about another woman in town who had almost the exact same experience - the only thing that was different was that she survived the ordeal and everybody's shouting praises to God that she's alive. Another member woman we went to visit was like overly sick and we gave her a blessing. Another recent convert we saw broke down and told us her daughter has just been diagnosed with cancer and she can't afford to lose another kid, so we gave her a blessing as well. On the road a car in front of us randomly swayed off the side of the road and we thought someone might be hurt; thankfully everyone was okay. We visited with a member of one of our bishoprics who expressed that his sister-in-law had just passed away so he wouldn't be able to make church. The bishop of the other ward randomly started having problems balancing and went to get checked - come to find out his head is filling up with blood and they need to drill into his head to relieve the pressure. Another woman asked for a blessing because she's going in for surgery on Tuesday to have something fixed that the doctors messed up on her face when they removed a cancerous mole, so we did that. Right after the blessing she told us she's made the decision to divorce her husband because he's an alcoholic and suicidal.
And on and on and on with things like this! I'm not joking, this all happened on the same day! It was one of the craziest days of my whole life and I still am pretty shaken up over it all. It's really sad to see people having so many difficulties, but one thing is for certain: this is a good time to be a missionary. It baffles me how many times we were called upon to give blessings, and the requests are still coming. We were able to offer service to all these people and we have some appointments set to help them out. It's cool to see how the Lord certainly puts us right in the way of all of these tragedies and allows us to be His mouthpiece to help these people understand that He loves them and wants them to be happy. We all just need to have trust that His plan is greater than ours!
So that's what my week was like. Certainly a weird one. Hopefully your week was a bit more... I dunno... consistent? Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful week! Jesus loves you!
Elder Slavens
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