Be careful with q-tips and don't just sleep on any old mattress

June 16th

One more week, man it goes by fast. Well this week was another of traveling and going on splits in other cities, it was a lot of fun!

So I had a pretty interesting experience during my first division. We had mission leadership council on Tuesday, than we got in a van with the leaders that are in other cities and went to do some splits with them. So on Wednesday morning, I was getting ready and decided to clean my ear with a q-tip. But, out of nowhere, I went almost deaf in my left ear! I was super confused and tried to rinse out my ear with water, but nothing worked. Turns out that a piece of cotton came off the q-tip and got lodged in my ear, basically blocking off my hearing. So we went to a district meeting and after that I decided I wouldn't be able to work without hearing all the way. I was really surprised at how hard it was for me to understand people and hear what was going on with only one ear! I got ahold of Elder McLean who took my spot as secretary and had him send me an address to a hospital. So after the district meeting, we went over there. It was pretty lame because it was during splits and that's that last thing I wanted to do, but if I didn't it would be really hard to work effectively. So after going to the address that I got, we say that it was the wrong one somehow! We ended up having to go to another hospital and after waiting to get seen, they sent me to another specialist because they didn't have to tools necessary to get it out. So we went to the specialist, had some confusion because of my health card and my foreigner document, and finally I got in to see the doctor. He just got this special tool that blasted water in my ear and got out the cotton. But wow, I learned this week to not take anything for granted! It's really bad to not be able to hear!

But, then we went to another city called Mirassol and did a division. We chose to go there because it's been a really long time since the assistants have gone. So we got there at night and slept. The plan was to go and sleep there for 2 nights and in the morning of the second day take an early bus back to Ribeirão, but then we had another interesting experience... We got there and the missionaries there puled out 2 mattresses for us to sleep on that are probably at least 10 years old and threw on some sheets over top. Then in the morning as were were studying, we started noticing little tiny bugs crawling on us. At first the other Elders said it's normal, but then we started seeing more and more... Elder Niedert couldn't take it anymore and took off his shirt and found like 6 under his collar and a few jumping down his leg. So yeah, the old mattresses we used were infested with little bugs... So during that whole day we were kind of itchy and we just felt gross. We also decided that we couldn't sleep another night on those mattresses, se we sacrificed our sleep to do some late traveling go go back to the other city and sleep there and then travel early in the morning. 

So 2 lessons I learned this week; be careful with q-tips and don't just sleep on any old mattress. 

Next week we won't travel as much because we have zone conferences, so it'll be another good opportunity to see all the other missionaries from around the mission. Thanks for everything! Love you!

Elder Odom