Thanksgiving

I know many of you are wondering why I have not written in awhile. It is a long story.

Several months ago we were settling into our routine of none stop action when I had a fainting spell that landed me in the hospital in Praia. For nearly 3 hours I came in and out of consciousness. They could not determine what caused it - if you could see the hospital here you would understand why. For weeks I felt okay but noticed something of a bump in my ear and it became irritated and my ear canal began to swell. I tried swimmer's ear drops and about passed out from the sting of them. I went into a doctor soon after and he diagnosed me with an ear infection. He gave me five days of a low grade antibiotic. That didn’t touch it. I went in again but the doctor was not in town and according to the nurse at the clinic they had no doctors there that looked at ears. The mission nurse, Sister Cassita, suggested I get the antibiotic refilled. I did and still did not get results. I went into another doctor and more antibiotics were given. Nothing seemed to help. My ear and my head behind my ear just ached all the time. Finally I went back to the original doctor who said he thought I had mastoiditis - a dangerous infection that can enter the brain.  Sister Cassita called the mission doctor in Germany, Dr. Swensen, who consulted with some ENTs in the states. The consensus was I was to fly to Salt Lake City as soon as possible, as there was no way to do a c-scan to confirm what the Cape Verde doctor suspected. There are no c-scans in the entire country.

Needless to say we were devastated. But Sister McKnight and Sister Cassita tried to keep our spirits up by helping us celebrate Thanksgiving. As you can image Cape Verdians do not celebrate this holiday and the only reason we even remotely pulled off the dinner was because Sister Cummings (the old nurse) had mailed us a care package with stuffing mix and cranberry sauce. Here is our feast. Two skinny roasted chickens , corn bread, stuffing. mash potatoes and gravy. It was all great.

And to top it off Sister McKnight made a pie. She had to hunt everywhere for this thin flimsy but workable pie tin. The apple pie was delicious which is a testimonial to Sister McKnight's cooking skills as she was very limited in what she could find.

The day went smoothly except for a little drama. President and Sister Oliveira were on another island so just before we sat down to eat some panicked Zone Leaders called Elder Mathews to tell him they had a rouge missionary. He hoped in the car to help out. It took about an hour for the three of them to find him. President spoke to him over the phone and all ended well. Then Elder Mathews joined us at the somewhat delayed feast. After that we went home to pack.